Earnings Not Carrying Stocks Higher

US companies are making money, just not enough to satisfy the investing appetites at this stage of the expansion.

Traders have been poring over third quarter reports for the better parts of two weeks now, and what they're seeing is unimpressive. Gone are the heady days of the early internet boom, when companies reported growth at torrid paces. Today's market is mundane, predictable, and eventually more conditioned to move on Fed-speak, rate moves, or geopolitics, rather than fundamentals, those boring profit statements from multi-nationals.

The good news is that stocks aren't experiencing another October like the last, when the indices tumbled day after day, wiping out most of the annual gains from 2018. That underlying fear of having a rug pulled out from under may be why nobody is either irrational or exuberant at this juncture.

This and next week are the busiest reporting weeks of the month. Unless there are some big negative surprises, one can reasonably expect markets to simply glide along until the Fed meeting at the end of October, when another 25 basis point cut in the federal funds rate is expected.

At the Close, Tuesday, October 22, 2019:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 26,788.10, -39.54 (-0.15%)
NASDAQ: 8,104.30, -58.69 (-0.72%)
S&P 500: 2,995.99, -10.73 (-0.36%)
NYSE Composite: 13,071.86, -16.76 (-0.13%)