U.S. stock markets closed, WEF Davos set to begin - what's moving markets
Investing.com -- U.S. stock markets will be closed on Monday for a federal holiday following a muted session to end the prior week in the wake of a fresh slate of bank earnings. More Wall Street lenders are due to report results on Tuesday. Elsewhere, the World Economic Forum in Davos is set to begin, as a survey of top economists shows that the outlook for global growth this year is «subdued.»
1. Bank earnings ahead
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are due to report their latest quarterly results later this week after a mixed set of earnings from some of their biggest banking peers on Wall Street.
Investors will be keen to see how the two lenders, whose operations tend to focus more on investment banking and asset management, fared during a time of weaker mergers and acquisitions activity that has weighed on key advisory fees.
On Friday, a slew of large U.S. banks said that fourth-quarter trading profits were boosted by recent hopes that the Federal Reserve may soon lower interest rates down from more than two-decade highs. The optimism fueled a stock market rally late last year, while signs emerged that a dormant deal pipeline was starting to reawaken.
Months' worth of elevated rates also supported net interest income, or the difference between what a bank pays for deposits and receives from loans, although some analysts wondered if this backstop was beginning to wane.
These institutions — which included JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup — set aside more provisions set aside to cover these souring loans, flagging an uptick in loan defaults back to pre-pandemic levels. Deep job cuts and steep one-off expenses dented returns as well.
But, even still, they presented a broadly upbeat assessment of the
Read more on investing.com
