American Express earnings, PCE data: What to Watch

In this article:

Yahoo Finance's Josh Lipton and Julie Hyman preview the top stories investors should pay attention to for Friday, January 26, including earnings from American Express (AXP), as well as PCE and pending home sales economic prints.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.

Video Transcript

[AUDIO LOGO]

JOSH LIPTON: Time now for what to watch Friday, January 26. On the earnings front, American Express, Colgate Palmolive, First Citizens Bank shares, and Oppenheimer all reporting earnings tomorrow. American Express will be one to watch. The Dow component is little changed so far this year. It's a good proxy for the state of the high-end consumer. Analysts expecting both revenue and earnings to rise from a year ago.

JULIE HYMAN: And over to the economy, new Personal Consumption Expenditures, or PCE, data is out tomorrow morning. It's the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, giving us more insight as to when we might see the first rate cut. And also, it's the last look at inflation before next week's Fed meeting.

JOSH LIPTON: And moving to the housing market, monthly pending home sales numbers coming out tomorrow. December sales expected to rise 2% after sales in November were flat. News coming after mortgage rates ticked higher in the latest week. 30-year fixed now at 6.69%.

JULIE HYMAN: And finally, you can tune in for another episode of Yahoo Finance's "Good Buy or Goodbye" tomorrow at 3:30 PM Eastern, where we help navigate the best moves for your portfolio. In terms of what to watch, I know you're zeroing in on pending home sales.

JOSH LIPTON: Yeah, housing, Julie Hyman. So today, we got new home sales. So they jumped 8% in December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 664,000. That's right near the average for the year. Economists say inventories, they still looked a bit on the high side. Tomorrow, pending home sales, right? So signed contracts of existing homes. Economists calling for a 2% jump there.

JULIE HYMAN: I am zooming in on American Express. We were just talking about Visa coming out with its numbers, seeing an enormous amount of volume, but the shares going down. Amex, those shares, by the way, up about 20% over the past year, which has outpaced other financials here. And analysts are looking for revenue of just under $16 billion.

But they're also going to be closely watching its revenue growth forecast. The long-term revenue growth forecast is 10% And there are some questions over whether they're going to be able to achieve that. Are we going to see a little bit of erosion on the upper end of spending? That's according to some analysts. And one analyst over in Oppenheimer does talk about that there is that worry, but it might be already baked into the stock. In other words, there's already skepticism that they can meet that goal. So we'll see what happens.

JOSH LIPTON: Yeah, we had any number of companies this week, though, telling us the consumer is looking OK. So we'll see. We'll hear from Amex tomorrow.

JULIE HYMAN: And the GDP report also showing that.

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