Why Big Tech Earnings, October CPI Print Could Be Near-Term Market Drivers: Gene Munster On These 2 Catalysts

The U.S. market staged a strong rebound this week thanks to some strong earnings news flow. The sustenance of the rally in the coming weeks will largely depend on two key things — earnings from blue-chip tech stocks and the September consumer price inflation data.

Big Tech Earnings: Apple, Inc. AAPL and Alphabet, Inc. GOOGL GOOG are likely to announce strong September quarter results and issue upbeat December quarter commentary, Loup Funds’ Gene Munster tweeted on Friday.

Alphabet is scheduled to report its third-quarter results on Tuesday after the market close. Analysts, on average, expect the company to report earnings per share, or EPS, of $1.26 on revenue of $70.68 billion, according to Benzinga Pro data. This compares to the year-ago numbers of $1.4 and $65.12 billion, respectively.

Snap, Inc.’s SNAP disappointing results may stir anxiety about ad revenue for the search giant. Munster said in another tweet earlier this week that he is not too concerned about Alphabet and Meta Platforms, Inc. META, as only some of the headwinds that affected Snap apply to these companies.

Apple will report its September quarter results Thursday after the market close. The consensus estimates call for EPS of $1.27 and revenue of $88.9 billion, up from $1.24 and $83.36 billion, respectively, a year ago.

Given Apple’s high-end iPhone 14 variants sold better than the low-end versions, any potential shortfall in volume could be offset by higher average selling prices of the former models.

See also: Snap Inc Posts Q3 Revenue, EPS Beat, Announces Share Buyback, But The Stock Is Plunging For This Reason

Munster said Amazon, Inc. AMZN and Meta are a “wild card.” Meta will report Wednesday after the market close, and Amazon’s third-quarter earnings report is due Thursday after the market close.

Meta’s third-quarter EPS is expected to fall from $3.22 to $1.89 and revenue may have declined from $29.01 billion to $27.41 billion. Amazon is also expected to report a decline in EPS from 31 cents to 22 cents despite revenue rising 15.1% to $127.57 billion.

CPI And The Rate Connection: Following the earnings news flow, the market attention will quickly shift to the October consumer price inflation report due on Nov. 10, Munster said.

In August, the year-over-year rate of CPI was 8.3%, ahead of the expected 8% rate but down from 8.5% in July. Core inflation came in at 6.3%, also exceeding the consensus of 6.1%.

The venture capitalist expects inflation to drop to 4%-5% early next year.

“That’s when the real work (and pain) of the Fed begins to get it down to 2%,” he added.

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