Looking Ahead to Thursday's Market

July 25, 2012

by Don Moenning

Quick Recap of Wednesday’s Session:

Stocks finished mixed on Wednesday, though the S&P 500 closed lower for the fourth consecutive session. Major indices spent the majority of the session going back and forth as traders tried to sort out conflicting sentiments. On one hand, disappointing US and global economic data continued to raise concerns on a macro level. On the other hand, ECB council member Ewald Nowotny said that there are arguments in favor of giving the ESM a banking license, which gave stocks a boost. The hurdles with Mr. Nowotny’s statements are convincing Germany (which hasn’t voted on the ESM yet), and unfavorable timing. Still, the computers picked up the headlines, and stocks rallied for a good portion of the session. A late afternoon selloff into the close pushed some major indices into negative territory. The Nasdaq was the laggard as Apple (AAPL) dragged the index down with an earnings miss after yesterday’s close.

S&P 500 -0.03%, NASDAQ -0.31%, DJIA +0.47%, Midcaps +0.13%.

Looking Ahead to Thursday:

Overnight we get Gfk Consumer Climate and Import Price Index from Germany, M3 from the Eurozone, and Retail Sales from Italy.

Here in the U.S. we get Weekly Jobless Claims and Durable Orders before the bell.

Shortly after the open is the Bloomberg Consumer Comfort at 9:45am EST, then Pending Home Sales shortly after at 10:00am EST.

On the earnings front, there are a plethora of high profile announcements on Thursday. Before the bell is Exxon Mobil (XOM), 3M (MMM), and Sprint Nextel (S), among others. After the bell announcements include Amazon.com (AMZN), McKesson (MCK), and Starbucks (SBUX).

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Looking Ahead to Thursday's Market