Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Ahead of today’s regular stock market trading session, pre-market futures are picking up where they left off Tuesday afternoon: higher. Continued optimism for a pro-growth Trump administration are sending major indexes to loftier reaches: the Dow is currently +145 points (+0.33%), the S&P 500 is +34 (+0.56%) and the Nasdaq +219 points (+1.01%). The small-cap Russell 2000 is slightly lower today (-0.14%) after leading the indexes yesterday.

As we’ve mentioned earlier this week in this space, we are light on economic prints in this holiday-shortened week. Last week brought us all-important CPI, PPI, Retail Sales and Housing Starts data, while next month concludes with two potentially impactful reports: Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) and a new interest rate meeting from the Fed, both on Friday. This week, we’ll see U.S. Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) after today’s opening bell, but nothing else on the economic-report agenda.

Q4 Earnings Roundup: JNJ, PG, ALLY & More

It is, however, an important week for calendar Q4 earnings results, including a Netflix NFLX report Tuesday afternoon that was its most positive in recent memory. This morning, if it’s in your bathroom cabinet, its company is probably reporting earnings this morning.

Johnson & Johnson JNJ shares are down slightly in today’s pre-market, after beating estimates slightly on both top and bottom lines for Q4 this morning: earnings of $2.04 per share outpaced the Zacks consensus by 4 cents, while revenues for the quarter reached $22.52 billion — for a modest +0.06% increase over estimates. But revenue guidance is coming in a bit light, sending the stock to give back the +2.44% it has earned year to date. For more on JNJ’s earnings, click here.