Friday, January 31, 2025
Today’s pre-market activity is positive, with futures in the green across major indexes: the Dow is +110 points at this hour, with the S&P 500 +26 and the Nasdaq leading the way, +158 points. The small-cap Russell 2000 is +5. Each of these indexes has been trading +1% or higher through the past five trading days, and between +4% (Nasdaq) and a robust +7% (Dow) off its January lows.
PCE Numbers In-Line for December
The Fed’s preferred gauge for inflation is the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) report, which came out this morning for the month of December. Results were as in-line with expectations as one could expect: +0.3% on headline PCE month over month, +2.6% year over year; core reads (stripping out volatile food and energy spending) came in at +0.2% month over month and +2.8% year over year — all slightly elevated from the previous month, but all just as expected.
For a little context, these figures also nestle comfortably within the mid-range of where we’ve seen these numbers throughout the past year. Headline PCE year over year reached a high of +2.8% back in March of 2024, and a low of +2.1% in September. Core year over year has spent its third-straight month at +2.8%, with January 2024’s +3.1% high and June’s +2.6% low.
Nominal Personal Income for December was +0.4% to $92.0 billion for the month. This was also in-line with analysts’ expectations. Personal Spending was slightly elevated from the consensus estimate: +0.7% for the month, from +0.6% expected, and +0.4% posted a month ago.
Q4 Earnings Parade Continues: XOM, CVX, CL & More
Plenty of Q4 earnings reports are out this morning, as well, but most were not perfect beats. ExxonMobil XOM, for instance, beat estimates comfortably on its bottom line with earnings of $1.67 per share over $1.55 projected, but revenues for Q4 of $83.43 billion missed the Zacks consensus by -4.24%. Conversely, Chevron CVX missed on earnings for the second time in three months — $2.06 per share versus $2.19 expected — but beat on the top line by +11.2% to $52.23 billion.
Check out the updated Zacks Earnings Calendar here.
Colgate-Palmolive CL also put up mixed Q4 results, with earnings of 91 cents per share outpacing expectations by 2 cents on revenues of $4.94 billion, which came up short of the $4.99 billion analysts had been expecting. Pharma giant AbbVie ABBV pulled beats on both top and bottom lines this morning: earnings of $2.16 per share beat Q4 estimates by 3 cents, while revenues of $15.1 billion comfortably bettered the $14.87 billion in the Zacks consensus. Both of these stocks have impressive earnings beat streaks going back six years.
For more on XOM’s earning, click here.
For more on CVX’s earning, click here.
For more on CL’s earning, click here.
For more on ABBV’s earning, click here.
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