US Election, FOMC and Other Key Things to Watch this Week

Last week was a wild week in terms of the market and news with NFP being one of the biggest surprises. The jobs report came in at just 12,000 added jobs with an estimate of over 100,000. Additionally, they revised the prior two months' growth significantly. This did not help an already beaten-up market, and after all the dust settled the S&P 500 ($SPX) (SPY) closed down over 1% on the week.

This week we still have earnings to watch out for, although nothing incredibly market moving as well as some news and the Fed Funds Rate and perhaps one of the biggest volatility risks: The US Election. 

Here are 5 things to watch this week in the Market.

Earnings

We are still right in the heart of earnings season, but thankfully most of the large market-moving names have passed us by. The next large reports are Disney (DIS) and Nvidia (NVDA) but those are a few weeks off still.

One of the bigger names reporting this week is Palantir (PLTR) which has had an amazing run this year being up over 140% Year to Date. Earnings could help continue the run, especially with all of the global conflict happening.

Toyota (TM) and Qualcomm (QCOM) are both due out Wednesday and could provide some insight into the consumer habits in the current market conditions. Toyota is one of the most popular vehicles in the US and Qualcomm produces chips for a lot of handheld computing devices that are currently in use. 

ISM Services PMI

The services PMI is out Tuesday at 10 am and this shows whether or not an industry is expanding or contracting. Services have been consistently over the 50 level showing continued industry expansion, albeit slow.

This week it's possible the release does not produce a lot of market movement unless it's a large beat or miss because of the other news events happening.

Election

It is election week in the US and Tuesday has the potential to be a very volatile day as poll results roll in throughout market hours.  The real volatility will likely start after polls close and accurate results start to get released. This won’t affect equities and options traders much, but could also make for a very volatile Wednesday as larger funds start to move money based on the election results. 

Unemployment Claims

Unemployment claims are always good for some movement on the release, but this could be particularly volatile with the election results from Tuesday being on everyone's mind. As long as claims don’t come in with a huge beat then we may see the market continue its trajectory from election night if it's a move higher. If significantly more claims are filed we could see the market 

FOMC 

To round out what will most likely be a very volatile week we have the Fed Funds Rate and FOMC conference on Thursday afternoon. The expectation now is for a .25% cut which would bring the rate down to 4.75%. On the heels of the election, anything other than a match of the rate could be interpreted as problematic by the market and could cause some selling. 

Best of luck this week and don’t forget to check out my daily options article.

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On the date of publication, Gavin McMaster did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.