The Week Ahead: HSBC, Shell and more US tech earnings in focus ahead of US jobs report

The situation in the Middle East remains firmly in focus but after Wall Street notched its best month in six years in April it’s unclear whether investors are paying much attention.

Earnings season continues apace with headliners from Palantir and AMD while Dow constituents McDonald’s and Disney will draw attention. Crypto is in focus with earnings from Strategy and Coinbase. In London Shell and HSBC report Q1 numbers.

The week starts with a holiday and ends with the regular US nonfarm payrolls report.

Here’s the key events to watch over the next week.

Monday, 4 May

The trading week kicks off with a quiet one in London as the FTSE will be shut for the Early May Bank Holiday. Wall Street is open however and the attention will be on earnings from Palantir with the stock down around 17%YTD.

Tuesday, 5 May

The Reserve Bank of Australia is expected to lift its cash rate by 25 basis points for a third straight meeting, taking ‌it to 4.35%.On the economic data front the focus is on US ISM services PMI, JOLTS job openings and new home sales data.

On Wall Street, earnings come from PayPal, Pfizer, Shopify, Arista Networks, Lucid and Super Micro Computer. But we’ll pick out two highlights – AMD and Strategy. The former is a chipmaker riding the AI wave with shares up 60% YTD to all-time highs. The latter is –60% lower in the last 12 months as Bitcoin has stumbled. In London the big earnings update comes from HSBC, with investors focused on the impact of the Iran war on its key Asian business and any further progress on cost savings as CEO Georges Elhedery's overhaul starts to pay off. In February shares hit a record high as the lender raised its target for return on tangible equity and said it's on track to deliver $1.5bn in cost savings 6 months ahead of schedule.

Wednesday, 6 May

Plenty of earnings still with updates from Novo Nordisk, Uber, Disney, ARM Holdings, Snap, Vestas, Orsted and Flutter. One to pick out is IonQ, the quantum computing company which recently reignited investor interest in this nascent tech sector.

Keep an eye on final services PMI data in Europe while in the US the ADO nonfarm employment report is due out.

Thursday, 7 May

Shell delivers Q1 results with expectations riding high after the surge in oil and gas prices since the start of the war in the Middle East. A month ago management said they expected trading activity to deliver “significantly higher earnings” for the first three months of the year, although these will be offset partially by a 3-7% drop in output from its gas facilities in Qatar.

On Wall Street we expect earnings updates from McDonald’s, Airbnb, Block, Cloudflare, Coinbase, CoreWeave, IREN, Rocket Lab and Wheaton Precious Metals. US weekly unemployment claims data is the only economic release of note.

Friday, 8 May

The monthly US nonfarm payrolls report is the highlight and could help further reshape expectations for the Fed. Payrolls recovered strongly in March, climbing 178k after declining 92k in Feb, while the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.3% from 4.4%. Wage growth also cooled to +3.5% from +3.8%. Another strong number could support the idea that the Fed does not need lower interest rates this year. Essentially, we’ll find out if the three FOMC officials who wished to remove the easing bias from the Fed’s last statement are right.