Between Mag 7 earnings and jobs data, next week is ‘the Super Bowl for investors’

Horizon Investments head of portfolio strategy Zachary Hill joins Julie Hyman and Josh Schafer on Market Domination to break down what investors need to know with Big Tech earnings and fresh economic data on deck in the final week before the US presidential election.

“The next two weeks are like the Super Bowl for investors, just one after another, after another,” Hill tells Yahoo Finance. Next week, five of the “Magnificent Seven” names — Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), Meta Platforms (META), Apple (AAPL) — are reporting quarterly earnings.

“That’s obviously a huge deal, not just for the Nasdaq (^IXIC) and related indexes, but also for the S&P 500 (^GSPC),” the strategist says, noting that the results could feed the “debate back and forth between, are we going to get a more cyclical kind of rebound because the economy is stronger or more of that kind of defensive growth trade that we’ve seen really over the last 18 months.”

On top of continued third quarter earnings results, the market will also get new data that could provide insight into the state of the US economy and the Federal Reserve’s next move at the November meeting. The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) on Tuesday with fresh non-farm payroll data on Friday, November 1. Investors will also get the first cut of the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the third quarter of 2024 on Wednesday.

Amid uncertainties, Hill says he does expect markets to go higher. “There’s a lot of reasons to worry,” like rates staying higher for longer and the election, among other factors, but “really when we cut through a lot of that noise, we focus on the primarily on the health of the underlying economy, because that’s going to drive earnings and ultimately that’s going to dictate the path for risk assets. We still see that, broadly speaking, as being something that’s that’s very supportive.”

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.

This post was written by Naomi Buchanan.