Earnings still look good: watch Exxon Mobil, Santander next week

Earnings ex-financials are up 12.3% with a 6.7% surprise
Despite talk about a weak start to earnings, they have surely come back and earnings ex-financials are actually up 12.3 percent with a 6.7 percent surprise and 70.7 percent surprise ratio. Pretty much in line with previous quarters. Energy and technology are the best performing sectors.

Exxon Mobil, Mastercard and Banco Santander are worth watching next week
Slightly more than 150 companies have reported in the S&P 500 Index, but the sample is still not large enough to not be sensitive to the upcoming earnings; just think about how Apple swung aggregate net income from negative surprise to positive surprise. We need more releases before we can really draw conclusions about the trend, winners, losers, margins etc.

Now, next week will see more important earnings.  Exxon Mobil, the largest energy company in the world, is a good proxy for the overall economy. Mastercard will give us insight into credit formation and consumers' economic health. Last but just as important, Banco Santander is reporting. Given that the bank is named by the European Banking Authority as having the largest  Tier 1 hole capital to fill, this will be one to watch.

Download our publication of next week's earnings releases.

Next week's most important releases are:

Tuesday
Exxon Mobil, Pfizer, Amazon and UPS

Wednesday
Roche, Qualcomm

Thursday
Deutsche Bank, Novo Nordisk, BBVA, LVMH, Unilever, AstraZeneca, Royal Dutch Shell, Merck, Mastercard and Dow Chemical

Friday
Volvo