U.S Markets Weekly Analysis

This week will be very busy for markets in terms of central banks’ meetings, earnings announcements and economic data.

After last week’s European Central Bank (ECB) meeting, we have Fed meeting and Bank of Japan (BOJ)’s meeting this week. Analysts do not expect any policy change from Fed and thus the probability of rate increase is zero in this meeting. Fed will announce its decision on Wednesday. In addition, for the rest of 2016, rate increase possibility is very low. Therefore, investors will focus on the comments of Fed about economic outlook, risks in international markets and inflation. Everyone will look for any change in Fed’s past comments. On Thursday, BOJ will announce its possible new decisions. Recall that in January’s meeting, BOJ announced negatişve interest rate policy. In this week’s meeting, analysts will look for any possible monetary easing steps.

On economic data side, investors will wait U.S GDP data. Data will be reported on Thursday, According to expectations, U.S economy is forecast to grow by 0.7% in the first quarter.  Also, durable goods orders, PMI, personel income and outlays are some other data which will be followed by investors in this week.

Moreover, next week will be very busy in terms of earnings announcements, Almost one third of S&P companies will report their first quarter earnnigs resullts, including Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Chevron, 3M, Mastercard, Exxon. Recall that Alphabet and Microsoft had reported weak results, so markets were affected negatively.