Morning Brew January 31 2024

Good Morning

Higher job openings and earnings by big tech that exceeded analyst expectations while falling short of traders` caused indexes to slip and the Dollar to gain.

Microsoft beat expectation but shares fell 1% int eh aftermarket, Google lost 6% after hours on disappointing ad income. AMD fell on a slightly disappointing outlook.

UPS lost more than 8% on a disappointing outlook while Ford could gain the same amount on a positive forecast. Indexes closed mixed with the Dow up 0.35%, the S&P down 0.06% and the  Nasdaq down 0.76%, over night, we see a slight decline, the US 500 is now 4904, the US 30 38460 and the US tech 100 NAS at 17336. The GER40 could not hold the 17k and is 16955.

The USD Index is trading at 103.65, EURUSD 1.0814, GBPUSD 1.2669 and USDJPY 147.85.

Gold and Silver are trading at 2033 and 23.05.

This morning, Novo Nordisk reported Q4 profits above expectations and announced to be  expecting sales to grow 15-25% this year.

The key event today is clearly the US Rate decision even though, there is clearly no expectation of a change with a certainty of 98%, the path the Fed sees going forward will be key. Currently, there is slightly less than a 50% chance of a cut in the March meeting and any shift will either boost of hurt risk sentiment.

On her page Althea puts forward an outlook for the Fed as well as the Bank of England tomorrow, for the Fed, she sees A slightly more hawkish message at this week’s FOMC meeting is possible as voting Federal Reserve bank presidents rotate… We expect a tapering of Quantitative Tightening to precede interest rate cuts. However, a review of the Fed economic projections in March might enable the central bank to bring both onto the table..

Koen Hoorelbeke and Peter Siks meticulously dissect the strategy of short call spreads:

https://www.home.saxo/content/articles/options/options-talk---episode-05---short-call-spreads-31012024

Any surprises will cause sharp reactions and take a look at your positions with that in mind.
The rate decision will be released at 20:00 CET and then the press conference will follow at 20:30 and has the potential to be more important.,

Key events:

Wednesday
- Data AU CPI, China PMI, DE Unemployment & CPI, CA GDP, US Rate decision
- Earnings: Novo Nordisk, Qualcomm, Mastercard, Novartis, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Boeing

Thursday
- Data JP& China PMI, Sweden Rate decision, Bank of England International PMI, US Initial Jobless claims
- Earnings: Apple, Roche, Amazon, Meta, Merck, Shell, Honeywell, Sanofi

Friday
- Data US Nonfarm Payrolls

- Earnings:  Keyence, ExxonMobil, AbbVie, Chevron, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Bristol-Myers Squibb

Expiries

Physically Settled Futures

HOG4 will expire 31 Jan at 16:00 GMT.

RBG4 will expire 31 Jan at 16:00 GMT.

LEG4 will expire 2 Feb at 16:00 GMT.

Expiring CFDs

OILUKMAR24 will expire 31 Jan 2024 at 02:00 GMT.

HK50JAN24 will expire 30 Jan at 14:00 GMT.