Q1 Earnings, Initial Claims In Focus
Zacks Investment Research | Apr 18, 2018 10:56PM ET
Considering how many game-changing headlines we’ve seen so far in 2018 — from inflation/interest rate fears to geopolitical hornets nests to Washington DC soap operas — this has been a welcome week for the stock markets. Just think if we’d have had some seasonably appropriate weather — we’d be on Cloud 9 right now! And this relative calm in a sea of turbulence continues ahead of the opening bell this morning, with Initial Jobless Claims and new Q1 earnings results hitting the tape.
Initial Jobless Claims remained steady at 232K last week, 1000 claims fewer than the previous week and remaining solidly within the long-term range of 225K-250K which is illustrative of a very strong (and continually tightening) labor market. Aside from dips below even these very robust figures a month or so ago, and spikes into higher jobless claims territory for a short time following last summer’s massive hurricanes, we have enjoyed an historically strong and steady U.S. employment situation for several years now. Continuing claims reached 1.863 million in the week, another very healthy sign.
Q1 earnings results continue strong and steady, as well. While we’re not seeing any of the biggest companies on Wall Street reporting today, such as the FANG stocks (most of which start next week; Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) posted positive surprises Monday), we do have a number of companies that have registered new figures, and almost all better than expected:
Zacks Rank #2 (Buy)-rated W.W. Grainger (NYSE:GWW) posted a heft earnings beat, reporting $4.18 per share vs. $3.41 expected. Revenues also surpassed expectations, $2.77 billion vs. $2.71 billion in the Zacks consensus. The company also raised sales guidance for full-year 2018 from 3-7% previously to 5-8% today, to $14.30-15.30 per share. Shares, as a result, are trading up 7% in today’s pre-market. Zacks Investment Research
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