Stocks were in a holding pattern Monday morning, with traders bracing for a busy week of corporate earnings results, a Federal Reserve monetary policy decision and deluge of economic data.
The S&P 500 ticked up, after the blue-chip index hit a record high late last week. The Dow was little changed, while the Nasdaq edged lower ahead of a bevy of Big Tech earnings.
Expectations are high heading into one of the busiest weeks of corporate earnings reports this earnings season. The vast majority of companies that have reported first-quarter results so far have handily exceeded estimates, with the vaccine-enabled recovery helping stoke demand across a wide variety of industries. Tesla (TSLA) is poised to post its quarterly earnings after market close on Monday. And altogether, companies comprising nearly half of the S&P 500's total market capitalization will report results this week, including mega-cap tech names like Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOGL), Facebook (FB), Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT).
Eighty-four percent of the S&P 500 companies that have reported first-quarter results to date posted a positive earnings per share surprise, according to data from FactSet. This would mark the highest percentage of companies reporting upside surprises since FactSet began tracking this metric in 2008, assuming this beat rate holds through the end of earnings season.