Upbeat Earnings News May Lead to Strength on Wall Street

By Investors Hub

The major U.S. index futures are pointing to a higher opening on Tuesday, with stocks likely to move to the upside following the mixed performance seen in the previous session.

The upward momentum on Wall Street partly reflects a positive reaction to the latest earnings news from big-name companies such as Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL).

Shares of Alphabet are jumping by 4.5 percent in pre-market trading after the tech giant reported better than expected quarterly results.

Drug giant Eli Lilly (LLY) is also seeing pre-market strength after reporting second quarter results that exceed expectations and announcing plans to spin off its Elanco Animal Health unit.

Trading activity may be somewhat subdued, however, with a lack of major U.S. economic data likely to keep some traders on the sidelines.

Following the lackluster performance seen last week, stocks continued to show a lack of direction during trading on Monday.

The major averages eventually ended the session mixed. While the Dow dipped 13.83 points or 0.1 percent to 25,044.29, the Nasdaq rose 12.67 points or 0.3 percent to 7,841.87 and the S&P 500 inched up 5.15 points or 0.2 percent to 2,806.98.

The choppy trading on Wall Street came following the release of a report from the National Association of Realtors showing an unexpected drop in existing home sales in the month of June.

NAR said existing home sales fell by 0.6 percent to an annual rate of 5.36 million in June from a downwardly revised rate of 5.41 million in May. Economists had expected existing home sales to climb by 0.5 percent.

“There continues to be a mismatch since the spring between the growing level of homebuyer demand in most of the country in relation to the actual pace of home sales, which are declining,” said NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun.

He added, “The root cause is without a doubt the severe housing shortage that is not releasing its grip on the nation’s housing market.”

The unexpected drop in existing home sales came as declines in the South and West exceeded sales gains in the Northeast and Midwest.

While most of the major sectors showed only modest moves on the day, considerable weakness was visible among oil service stocks. Reflecting the weakness in the sector, the Philadelphia Oil Service Index slumped by 2.2 percent.

Gold and housing stocks also moved to the downside, while significant strength was visible among financial and steel stocks.