As the fourth-quarter earnings season heads into February, the basic results have been strong, and results coming this week should reinforce that overall picture.
Companies like data-analysis company Palantir Technologies (PLTR) and online retail giant Amazon.com (AMZN) should reinforce that view with bullish results expected.
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But a big note of uncertainty has been injected into the picture: the tariffs imposed Saturday by the Trump administration on goods imported from Canada, Mexico and China.
The tariffs won’t affect earnings that are about to be reported. They may affect first-quarter results from any number of companies.
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But they did affect stocks on Friday. Gains early in the day melted away by the close. The S&P 500 was up as many 50 points by noon and seemed to have enough momentum to make a new high. The tariff announcement turned a gain of 41 points into a loss of 31 points, or 0.8%, to 6,041.
The Dow Jones industrials fell 337 points, or 0.8%, to 44,545. The Nasdaq Composite was off 54 points, or 0.3%, to 19,627.
As losses go, these were small, except it was the second day of surprising volatility this past week. The first was Monday when the Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 slid on reports that the little-known Chinese company DeepSeek had developed a new and much cheaper competitor to Nvidia’s (NVDA) artificial intelligence chip systems.
Nvidia shares slumped 15.8% on the week, and its market cap fell below $3 trillion for the first time since early last fall.
The tariffs, meanwhile, will affect prices for cell phones, new cars, clothing, Mexican fresh produce, even maple syrup — because Canada is the world’s biggest maple syrup producer. Mexico and Canada plan to retaliate, and China is taking its case to the World Trade Organization.
While the trade battle rages on, the stock market faces another big week for earnings with reports due from multiple Dow companies and many companies whose stocks are the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 indexes.
Here are four stocks that will command a great deal of investor attention.
Earnings: Due after Monday’s close. Market capitalization: $187.9 billion. Stock price: $82.49, up 1.2% on Friday and up 9.1% in January. Earnings estimate: 11 cents a share, up 37.5% from a year ago. Revenue estimate: $776.8 million, up about 28% from a year ago. Palantir’s (PLTR) January gain sounds good, but it was a bit muted. The shares had gained 340% gain in 2024 and nearly 48% between the Nov. 5, 2024 election and Dec. 31. The company, led by CEO Alex Karp, specializes in big data analysis and machine learning and got its start making sense of mounds of data from the U.S. government. Co-founder Peter Thiel has close ties to Elon Musk.