Fed's Beige Book, Slack earnings — What to know in markets Wednesday
As uncertainty continues to rattle markets, investors will get a look into what businesses think about the current state of the economy when the Federal Reserve releases its Beige Book Wednesday afternoon.
Economists agree that mentions of trade will be closely monitored. “The Beige Book will likely be scoured for anecdotes about the impact of the trade war or evidence that the negative business sentiment is spreading to the non-manufacturing sector,” Deutsche Bank wrote in a note Friday.
Meanwhile, Société Générale was much more optimistic, “We expect the pre-FOMC regional Fed report to describe growth as moderate and generally healthy with concerns mounting due to trade policy and difficult planting and growing conditions in the agricultural regions,” the bank said in a note Monday.
On the earnings calendar, the focus will me on Slack (WORK) when it reports after the closing bell Wednesday. Slack hit the public market through a direct listing on June 20, and the reference price was set at $26 per share. The online messaging company has been focused on expanding its enterprise business, and thus, analysts are expecting Slack’s sales growth to decelerate at least in the near term. So far, most of Slack’s customer base is smaller companies, and only about 1% of its customers have more than $100,000 in annual revenue.
Shares of Slack have been holding up relatively well despite the recent market volatility. Since its direct listing, the stock is up 10%, while the S&P 500 (^GSPC) fell 0.3% in the same time period.
Slack is expected to report an adjusted earnings loss of 19 cents per share on $141.55 million in revenue. The options market is implying a 13.87% move in either direction following the report.
Other notable earnings announcements scheduled for Wednesday include American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) ahead of the market open, and MongoDB (MDB) and Palo Alto Networks (PANW) after the market close.
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Heidi Chung is a reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @heidi_chung.
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