13 January 2012 at 10:16 GMT
The first week of the fourth quarter earnings season has been quiet as expected. Alcoa reported earnings in line with estimates but better-than-expected revenue with a positive outlook; investors are pleased and the shares are trading 5.3 percent higher since the earnings release.
Earnings start to get serious today with J.P. Morgan Chase reporting earnings at 12:00 GMT and we will cover the release in more depth later today in our Equity Update.
Next week will be the real test of corporate earnings with 55 companies reporting, dominated by US companies. The week will feature major financials and technology companies in the US and especially the former will be of great focus as financials provide insight into credit formation in the world's largest economy. In the tech industry we will have earnings from all the big guys and this should provide a good proxy for technology spending. On Friday, the world's largest industrial conglomerate General Electric will report and its outlook for 2012 is of great importance, so watch out for that.
Read the full earnings publication with earnings estimates here.
Tuesday
Rio Tinto, Wells Fargo and Citigroup.
Wednesday
US Bancorp, Goldman Sachs and eBay.
Thursday
Microsoft, IBM, Google, Intel, Bank of America, American Express, Union Pacific Corp., Freeport-McMoRan, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley
Friday
General Electric and Schlumberger.