Why Negative Headlines Still Aren’t Hurting Stocks

What’s in Today’s Report:

• Why Negative Headlines Still Aren’t Hurting Stocks (Three Reasons)
• Weekly Market Preview:  Can Good Earnings Continue to Offset Negative Macro Headlines?
• Weekly Market Cheat Sheet:  Flash PMIs and Powell’s speech Friday are the highlights.

Futures are modestly higher on momentum from Friday’s rally and following mixed (but not bad) global PMIs.

Economic data was mixed as the EU August flash composite PMI was solid (59.5 vs. (E ) 59.7) although the UK  PMI (55.3 vs. (E ) 58.4) missed expectations, as did the Japanese and Australian readings.  But, in aggregate, the numbers were good enough to show the global economic recovery is still on going (and that helped stocks rally this morning).

There was improvement on the COVID front as new cases in China continued to plunge with daily new cases falling to zero in many local precincts and that’s raising hopes the current COVID wave in China is subsiding.

Today focus will be on the August Flash Composite PMI (E: 59.5) and markets will want to see solid data (so close to last month’s reading and close to expectations).  If it’s a bad miss, that will likely weigh on stocks.  We also get Existing Home Sales (E: 5.83M) but that shouldn’t move markets.