Dow Jones, Nasdaq, S&P 500 weekly preview: Citi boosts SPX target

investing.com:

S&P 500 (SPX) rose 1% last week after investors used a Thursday mini-selloff as a buying opportunity. Moreover, recent economic data shows the U.S. economy is performing stronger than expected, fueling bets that the Federal Reserve will still manage to deliver a soft landing.

While the Fed hiked again last week and reiterated its concern over still-elevated inflation, market participants currently do not expect further rate hikes this year.

Nasdaq Composite Index (IXIC) gained as much as 2% last week, underpinned by gains on mega-cap stocks like Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) and Google-parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL). Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) are due to report on Thursday after the market close.

“The current setup is fairly similar to last quarter, where the combination of a low hurdle rate, along with the improving fundamentals, eventually led to meaningful beats. Q2 EPS projections for S&P 500 were cut significantly ahead of the reporting season, and most macro data showed a sequential improvement versus Q1,” JPMorgan analysts wrote recently.

Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) continues to rise, recording its 3rd consecutive weekly gain. The index also hit the highest levels seen since last February.

For this week, the jobs report (Friday) will be the highlight, along with the ADP employment change and JOLTS.

Apple and Amazon to report

According to FactSet, 51% of S&P 500 companies reported actual results as of Friday, July 28. As many as 80% of S&P 500 companies have reported a positive EPS surprise while 64% of S&P 500 companies reported a positive revenue surprise.

The blended earnings decline so far for the second quarter is 7.3%, worse than the expected decline of 7%. For Q3 2023, 27 S&P 500