Get ahead of the market by subscribing to Seeking Alpha’s The Week Ahead on Wall Street, a preview of key events scheduled for next week. This newsletter keeps you up to date on the big stories making headlines, including upcoming IPOs, investor days, earnings reports and conference presentations.
This week’s Federal Reserve meeting will have everyone’s attention, although traders believe it is a fait accompli. Fed funds futures said there was a 99% chance that the Federal Open Market Committee would keep interest rates unchanged. Top inflation data from the past week have reinforced that belief and put the spotlight on the summary of economic forecasts, also known as dot plots. Currently, the market is still digesting expectations of an interest rate cut in the first quarter of June. James A. Kostohryz, head of the investment group, said that based on February’s consumer price index, “the Fed needs to seriously step up the hawkish tone of its communications to curb concerns about the Fed’s 2024 Expectations for the timing and magnitude of annual rate cuts.” But if Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members roll out their forecasts, the longer-term higher narrative will gain support again. Beyond the Fed, there’s a lot of housing data to consider. The NAHB Housing Market Index for March, February starts and permits data, and February existing home sales data are all due.
profit focus: Monday, March 18 – StoneCo (STNE), Comtech (CMTL) and Science Applications (SAIC). View the full earnings calendar.
profit focus: Tuesday, March 19 – Tencent Music (TME), Caleres (CAL), Citi Trends (CTRN) and Core & Main (CNM). View the full earnings calendar. View the full earnings calendar.
profit focus: Wednesday, March 20 – Micron Technology (MU), Signet Jewelers (SIG), General Mills (GIS) and Five Below (FIVE). View the full earnings calendar. View the full earnings calendar.
profit focus: Thursday, March 22 – Nike (NO), FedEx (FDX), Accenture (Acetonitrile), Lululemon (Lulu) and Darden Restaurant (direct reductase). View the full earnings calendar. View the full earnings calendar.
Volatility Watch: Options trading volume increased on Chewy (CHWY). The list of highly shorted stocks heading into the new week includes B. Riley (RILY), Imperial oil(People’s Government of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region) and Atmus filter technology (ATMU). The most overbought stocks based on the 14-day relative strength index include Natural Resource Partners (national research plan), zoom information (sky) and Zeev Davis (ZD). The most oversold stocks on the 14-day RSI include Air Products and Chemicals (APD), Infosys (Infia) and Tesla (Tesla).
IPO Watch: Reddit (RDDT) headlines the IPO calendar with its highly anticipated debut. The social media company expects to issue 22 million shares at a price of $31 to $34 per share, raising up to $748 million in the deal. Intel-backed Astera Labs (ALAB) also launched its IPO this week. The semiconductor connectivity company plans to raise up to $534 million by selling 17.8 million shares at $27 to $30 each. Approximately 3M’s stock sales came from existing shareholders. Additionally, Instacart (CART) will end its lockup period.
investor events:Nvidia(NASDAQ: NVDA) will be held for four days at the annual GTC conference at the San Jose Convention Center. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang will unveil the company’s latest breakthroughs in accelerating computing, generating artificial intelligence and robotics. (More below.) CERAWeek in Houston, Texas, will bring together global leaders to generate new ideas, insights and solutions to address the biggest energy, environmental and climate challenges of the future. Speakers include ExxonMobil (XOM) CEO Darren Woods, Chevron (CVX) CEO Mike Wirth, Shell (SHEL) CEO Wael Sawan and Amin Nasser, CEO of Saudi Aramco (ARMCO). Also upcoming are Western Midstream Partners (WES) Virtual Energy and Utilities Day, Brown-Forman (BF.A) (BF.B) Investor Day, Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) Investor Day, Altair Engineering (ALTR) Investor Day and Synopsys (SNPS) Investor Day.
GTC preview: BofA Securities calls Nvidia’s (NVDA) GPI technology conference “AI Woodstock.” Maybe many people will say that they will be there in a few decades. Wedbush said attendees will be looking for commentary on the need for liquid cooling in powerful architectures and that “one of the difficulties in liquid cooling gaining traction is the lack of standard implementation.” From an equity perspective, investment group principal Livy Investment Research said, ” Nvidia is currently trading exactly where it should be. Based on historical observations, “post-GTC momentum is expected to pick up gradually and more significantly towards the end of the first quarter of 2025” and following the aforementioned earnings release. “
