E-Trade, JP Morgan, CitiGroup to report before open Monday.
MSFT, IBM, ChaseManhattan, AOL, XON, Philip Morris after close.
Should give the market some direction.
WALL ST WEEK AHEAD/Week of reckoning for earnings
By Eric Wahlgren
Sunday July 18, 3:34 pm Eastern Time
biz.yahoo.com
NEW YORK, July 18 (Reuters) - With more heavyhitters stepping up to the plate this week to report earnings than in any other week in the quarter, investors will want to see a lot of home runs before socking more money into stocks.
Because investors have gotten their hopes up so high after the preseason produced remarkably few profit warnings, Wall Streeters say results that merely match estimates will not score high enough to build on record-setting market gains.
The Dow ended last week at an all-time high of 11,209.84.
''(Companies) will have to do a lot more than meet the estimates to catapult us higher,'' Charles Payne, head analyst at Wall Street Strategies, said.
By the time Wall Street opens for business on Monday, a pair of financial giants, both in the Dow, will have reported results: J.P. Morgan & Co. Inc. (NYSE:JPM - news) and Citigroup (NYSE:C - news).
They will be followed in rapid succession by bellwethers such as International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM - news) , Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news), Chase Manhattan Corp. (NYSE:CMB - news), Philip Morris Cos. Inc. (NYSE:MO - news), Exxon Corp (NYSE:XON - news) and America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news), to tick off just a few.
Any remnants of interest rate and inflation worries evaporated last week with news the Consumer Price Index, which measures retail prices in the United States, registered no increase in June, its second straight month unchanged.
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will grab center stage mid-week with his semi-annual Humphrey Hawkins testimony to Congress on the state of the U.S. economy. But few are worried Greenspan will signal any intent to to further jack up rates after a recent, modest, 25 basis-point increase.
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