Stocks Rally; Investors Wait for OPEC, Earnings

April 4, 2020 - Stocks are off to a good start this week. Monday's rally came on optimism that we may have seen the peak of coronavirus deaths in New York, although other parts of the country are likely weeks behind.

Oil ministers from OPEC and Russia are planning to meet on Thursday of this week and are expected to agree to production cuts. Cuts will likely only help part of the problem as the world is still flooded with oil and most of the largest economies are under some form of social distancing order that has slashed the use of oil products. Reports (and tweets) about this production cut have been keys to both today's and last Thursday's rally, so it will be interesting to see the size of the cut that gets agreed to, and if the oil market continues to rally after the number is in place.

Stock traders are very much in an in-between time as the economic data we're getting doesn't include the most recent developments, and we're still a week away from earnings season, when we'll get idea of how bad the first quarter was, and some insight into what companies are expecting in the fourth quarter and for the rest of the year. It's hard to guess how the market will react to these reports as at least the last two weeks of March was wiped out for a large number of companies, and no one really knows what exactly to expect for the rest of 2020.

Economic Events this Week

Everything on this list is a little bit dated and likely only hints at how hard the economy has been whacked in the last several weeks.

• Tuesday
  • 10:00 a.m. - JOLTS - Job Openings
  • 3:000 p.m. - Consumer Credit
• Wednesday
  • 7:00 a.m. - MBA Mortgage Applications Index
  • 10:30 a.m. - EIA Crude Oil Inventories
• Thursday
  • 8:30 a.m. - PPI
  • 8:30 a.m. - Initial Claims

Earnings Reports this Week

Next week is the start of earnings season, so this is pretty close to the slowest week of the quarter.

Tuesday:

• Before the bell: ANGO, GBX, LNN
• After the bell: LEVI, SGH

Wednesday:

• Before the bell: RPM
• After the bell: PSMT

Thursday:

• Before the bell: CONN,
• After the bell: SJR, WDFC

Sector and Industry Sentiment

As part of the upgrade and redesigned InvestorsObserver, we are now calculating a proprietary Sentiment Score for stocks. This score looks at price action, volume trends and data from the options market when available to try to get a sense of how the market feels about a stock. We're replacing the lists of sectors and industries that have performed well or poorly over various time periods with a ranking of all eleven sectors in order of sentiment and then the top ten and bottom ten industries.

Sector Sentiment

Energy Basic Materials Consumer Defensive Healthcare Communication Services Technology Industrials Utilities Financial Services Real Estate Consumer Cyclical

Top Industries

Oil & Gas E&P Oil & Gas Integrated Uranium Grocery Stores Coking Coal Infrastructure Operations Other Precious Metals & Mining Discount Stores Gold Shell Companies

Bottom Industries

Mortgage Finance REIT - Mortgage Airlines Airports & Air Services Insurance - Specialty Credit Services REIT - Hotel & Motel REIT - Diversified REIT - Retail REIT - Residential