Key financial news for traders and bank reports

Apple denies violating the court order in its case against Epic Games. Apple Inc, according to a court order filed by Epic Games Inc, must allow mobile application developers to redirect users to alternative resources to pay for services in the App Store.

The Bitcoin halving will hit the cryptocurrency by $10 billion. The cryptocurrency upgrade will reduce the new supply at the end of April.

Competition for favorable electricity tariffs from AI companies is growing.

Given the consensus that the Fed will keep interest rates higher for longer, economists will continue to closely monitor any signs that the resilience of American consumers is weakening.

Fresh data on this trend will be released Monday in the March retail sales report. Economists expect retail sales to rise 0.4% in March from the previous month. This will continue the recovery seen in February after retail sales fell 1.1% in January.

"We don't think consumer spending will slow significantly, especially as wage growth remains strong," Wells Fargo's economics team wrote in a note to clients. “Real-time credit card spending data shows that consumer spending remained above pre-pandemic trends in March.”

More banks, including Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley, are expected to report earnings early next week as investors continue to watch how higher interest rates impact the financial services sector.
In data from the first full week of quarterly earnings (Q1), Wall Street strategists are turning their attention to how companies are driving earnings growth.

Over the past year, many companies have used layoffs and other tactics to keep profits rising despite lagging demand. Strategists expect that narrative to change this quarter for the market rally to continue and for earnings growth to support recent signs of an accelerating U.S. economy.

S&P 500 earnings for the first quarter are expected to rise 3.4%, below the 10-year average of 5.1%, according to FactSet.

Ahead are the reports of TSMC, UNH, ASML, PG, JNJ, BAC, NFLX, ABT, AXP, BX, MS, ISRG, GS, SCHW, ELV, PLD (this is a list of only companies with a capitalization of $100+ billion). In total, 41 companies with a total capitalization of $3.9 trillion will report from the S&P 500 index. There will be even busier reporting weeks ahead. But this is the first serious test of the market for the sustainability of the bullish trend.

Charles Schwab, Goldman Sachs Group and M&T Bank will report.

The Census Bureau reports preliminary estimates of retail and food service sales for March. Consensus estimates are for retail sales to rise 0.4% month-on-month to $704 billion, following a 0.6% rise in February. Excluding autos, retail sales are expected to rise 0.3%, down two-tenths of a percentage point from before.

The National Association of Home Builders releases the housing market index for April. Economists are forecasting 51, the same as March.

In the morning, Asian markets are under slight pressure.

The US dollar is stable, although there is a tendency for the dollar to rise due to the expected difference in the monetary policies of the Fed and the ECB - the difference in interest rates is expected to increase in favor of the dollar relative to the euro.

US stock index futures are slightly up.

Precious metals and oil are in a slight minus – investors are not afraid of escalation in the Middle East.
Bitcoin has stabilized near $65 thousand.