Firing Of FBI Director James Comey

Considering that the shakeup in Washington DC yesterday — with the sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey by President Trump — isn’t something you see every day, market futures are so far proving pretty resilient. We see fair value on the S&P 500, Dow and Nasdaq all hovering around unched at this hour.

Whether or not this is Trump rightly throwing Comey under the bus for his mishandling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation or the President is cutting ties with anyone who he feels may further align him with possible Russian intel interference in the U.S. general election last November, it would stand to reason a wall of worry may be growing that may keep a new bull-market rally from occurring in the very near term. The sooner the political climate in the nation’s capital can go back to “normal,” the better it will be for bull-market traders.

Had this story emerged last week, its impact may have been more diluted, as Q1 earnings season was at its apex, new monthly jobs numbers were hitting the tape, the market was digesting the rather weak first read of Q1 GDP growth and Fed Chair Janet Yellen was speaking on the possibilities of interest rate hikes in the future. Yet all these issues are in the rear view currently, and a seeming controversy in DC is now coming at a rather inopportune time.

No, we’re not seeing this manifest in the pre-market, but another shoe dropping in regard to this issue today or at some point during the remainder of the trading week may trigger some negative activity that market participants ought to keep aware of.

Q1 Earnings Sweep-Up

Time, Inc. (NYSE:TIME) disappointed analysts when it missed the expected loss of 15 cents per share by 3 cents. The media firm also cut its dividend yield drastically, from 19 cents per share to 4 cents. The Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) stock has now missed for its second straight quarter, and shares are trading down nearly 8% in the pre-market.

Specialty retailer Wolverine World Wide (NYSE:WWW) posted an impressive earnings beat by 6 cents per share to 37 cents. This marks at least the fifth straight quarter of earnings beats for the casual apparel company, with a trailing 4-quarter average earnings beat of more than 12%. Shares are way up in today’s pre-market, now +9.5%.

Sotheby’s (NYSE:BID) posted a loss of 21 cents in the quarter, though this was still a vast improvement over the -39 cents per share expected in the Zacks consensus. Shares are up close to 3% early today following the earnings report from the seasonally weak quarter, which showed a loss of 35 cents per share this time last year.