Markets today: a light data slate before earnings season opens

A quiet U.S. calendar hands the morning to Fed speakers and weekly jobless claims, with big-bank results and a sentiment read waiting next week.

The trading day opens without a single high-importance U.S. data release scheduled. What the calendar does carry belongs to the Federal Reserve and the weekly labor read: the Fed’s Waller spoke before the open, and initial jobless claims land at 8:30 a.m. ET. The Fed’s Musalem takes the microphone this afternoon. The bigger turn comes next week. Third-quarter earnings season opens Tuesday, when JPMorgan Chase and two other large names report, and Friday brings the first October read on consumer sentiment. Today is quiet; the week is not.

On the calendar today

Two Fed officials speak today. The Fed’s Waller appeared early, before the stock market open; the Fed’s Musalem follows at 1:40 p.m. ET. Two policy voices in a single session is more than the calendar usually hands over. Between the speeches sit the day’s only scheduled data. Weekly initial jobless claims print at 8:30 a.m. ET, the first of the morning’s two numbers, with the forecast near 200,000 after 197,000 the week before. At 11:00 a.m. ET the Atlanta Fed refreshes its GDPNow tracker, which last read 3.7% and has held at that level.

Backdrop

Stocks slipped Wednesday. The S&P 500 closed at 7,801.77, down 17.16 points or 0.22%, and the Nasdaq Composite eased 0.22% to 27,538.69. The Dow fell further, off 341.41 points or 0.66% at 51,179.87. The losses were modest across the major indexes, each holding to less than a one percent decline. The Cboe Volatility Index rose 4.58% to 15.77, still low by historical standards. The 10-year Treasury yield settled at 5.27%.

The week ahead

Two sessions stand out.

Friday. The University of Michigan releases its preliminary October consumer sentiment index at 10:00 a.m. ET. Delta Air Lines reports earnings.
Tuesday. Existing home sales arrive at 10:00 a.m. ET. JPMorgan Chase, Johnson & Johnson and UnitedHealth Group report, opening the quarter’s earnings calendar for the large banks and the health names.

What to watch

Watch the labor read first. Weekly jobless claims are the market’s most timely gauge of hiring, and today’s figure lands into an otherwise empty data slate. That makes it the clearest signal before the afternoon. Fed commentary fills the rest of the day. With Waller already on the record this morning and Musalem due after lunch, the attention on the microphone stays fixed on the path for interest rates. The GDPNow refresh at 11:00 a.m. ET gives a running tally of growth ahead of the government’s own figures. With no corporate results due before the open, the hard data and the Fed voices are the whole of the session’s agenda.

This is a general-market summary for information only — not investment advice, and not a recommendation regarding any security.