More earnings announcements are to be made this week, along with the highly-anticipated April’s jobs report in the US. So far, technology companies have had the best earnings reactions. The average technology name beat earnings estimates by more than 8% and increased by almost 3%, according to market analysts.
Some of the stars reporting this week include Disney, Tyson Foods, Pinterest, General Motors, CVS, Lyft, PayPal, Peloton, Square, Uber.
On the central position this week will be April’s jobs report in the US released on Friday. The rise in weekly jobless claims over the past few weeks is a fairly decent leading indicator of how gloomy this report is likely to be. Expectations are for 20m jobs to be lost. The unemployment rate is also set to surge from 4.4% in March, when 701,000 people lost their jobs in the non-farm payrolls report, to 15.1%. Some market analysts forecast even 20%. However, when the business re-open the recovery on the labour market, although incomplete, should be quick to observe.
This week’s Bank of England meeting on Friday will be held by the new governor Andrew Bailey. The central bank has already made it quite clear it will do whatever it takes to help the UK economy through the current crisis, working with the UK treasury and government. With the UK’s base rate already at a record low of 0.1% nobody is expecting any more cuts, but that’s not to say the central bank won’t go further in the range of assets it looks to purchase.