By Peter Nurse
Investing.com - U.S. stocks are seen opening largely unchanged Monday, as investors gear up for one of the busiest weeks of the first-quarter earnings season, with key economic data and a Federal Reserve meeting thrown in for good measure.
At 7:05 AM ET (1205 GMT), the Dow Futures contract was up 20 points, or 0.1%, S&P 500 Futures traded 4 points, or 0.1%, lower, and Nasdaq 100 Futures dropped 44 points, or 0.3%.
The week ahead is a major one for corporate earnings, with around 180 S&P 500 companies, including 10 Dow Jones Industrial Average components, set to update investors on how their businesses fared during the first three months of the year.
The first-quarter earnings season has gotten off to a strong start, with 86% of companies reporting earnings beats so far, according to Refinitiv. However, that didn't translate uniformly into gains for the market, with investors raising question marks over various companies' outlooks.
Most of the focus this week will be on the five big-name mega-cap tech companies - Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) - with all five likely to enjoy another quarter of blockbuster earnings and sales growth, given their dominance in the tech space.
The major earnings release Monday comes after the close, in the form of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA). Its outlook is likely to be crucial as the electric car maker seeks to maintain its sky-high valuation, which is mostly based on predictions of huge growth down the line.
Aside from earnings, the Federal Reserve holds its latest two-day policy-setting meeting this week, concluding on Wednesday, but is not expected to change its ultra-easy monetary policies.
On the same day, President Joe Biden is expected to spell out his infrastructure spending plan, and the tax hikes to pay for it, to a joint session of Congress.
March durable goods orders are due at 8:30 AM ET (1330 GMT), but the major release this week will be Thursday’s preliminary reading of first quarter U.S. gross domestic product. This is expected to show the economy expanded at an annual rate of 6.5% in the January-March period, accelerating from growth of 4.3% in the previous quarter.
Oil prices eased Monday, on continued concerns that rising numbers of Covid-19 cases in India and Japan, the third and fourth largest crude importers in the world respectively, will hit demand for the product in Asia.
U.S. crude futures traded 1.4% lower at $61.30 a barrel, while the Brent contract fell 1.4% to $64.51. Both contracts fell around 1% last week.
OPEC’s Joint Technical Committee of experts is meeting Monday, and is supposed to end with a formal recommendation to ministers on output policy.
Elsewhere, gold futures rose 0.1% to $1,778.85/oz, while EUR/USD traded 0.1% lower at 1.2090.