Market Awaits JOLTS Jobs Report

Kicking off another day of trading, the Dow is flat but other indexes are up: the S&P 500 +0.23%, the Nasdaq +0.51% and the small-cap Russell 2000 +0.32%. The rebound off Friday’s near-term lows continues at a somewhat measured pace, with an apparent bullish signal for tech stocks at this hour.

Bob Iger’s Replacements at Disney Announced

A day after The Walt Disney Co. DIS reported encouraging quarterly earnings, bolstered largely due to outperformance at the company’s theme parks, has announced changes to the front office. CEO Bob Iger will step down next month — not the end of the year, as earlier surmised — and will be replaced by Josh D’Amaro, currently the Chairman of Disney Experiences, where he has served since 2020. Disney Experiences includes Parks, Cruises and Consumer Products.

Meanwhile, Dana Walden, currently head of Disney Entertainment Media — including news and content — will take over as both Disney President and Chief Creative Officer (a newly- minted role at the company) on March 18th. This will effectively give the entertainment behemoth two heads for leadership going forward. Shares of DIS are up +1.4% on the news at this hour.

JOLTS Jobs Numbers Out After the Open

The December report for Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) comes out this morning at 10am ET, with expectations for the lowest number of the year for the second-straight month: 7.1 million. The last print came in at 7.14 million, which amounted to the fewest job openings since September of 2024.

This is the first set of numbers addressing “Jobs Week” this week, and reports a month in arrears from Wednesday’s ADP ADP private-sector payrolls and Friday’s Employment Situation from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Last report, more than -100K job openings in both Accommodation/Food Services and Trade/Transportation/Utilities sank results, with all four regions posting negative job openings. We’ll see how December numbers compare.

Q4 Earnings Roundup Ahead of the Bell

Zacks Rank #4 (Sell)-rated PayPal PYPL missed estimates on both top and bottom lines this morning, posting earnings of $1.23 per share which came 6 cents shy of the Zacks consensus. Revenues of $8.68 billion were -1.07% below expectations. Shares are down -18% in today’s pre-market trading, after shedding -10% already year to date.

Big Pharma staples Pfizer PFE and Merck MRK both outperformed estimates this morning in their respective Q4 reports: Pfizer posted a +15.8% earnings surprise to $0.66 per share on a +4.26% outperformance on revenues to $17.56 billion, while Merck beat on earnings by a penny to $2.04 per share on a +1.33% revenue surprise to $16.4 billion. But investors are selling the news on lukewarm outlooks for both major drugmakers.

Marathon Petroleum MPC had perhaps the strongest quarterly beat of the morning, logging earnings of $4.07 per share versus expectations of $2.73, for a +49% positive surprise. Revenues of $33.42 billion were also strongly ahead of estimates, by +12.9%. Shares are up +3.4% at this hour, +8.8% year to date.

What to Expect During Today’s Stock Market

Earnings, earnings and more earnings! Once the closing bell sounds, we’ll prepare for Q4 earnings from Advanced Micro Devices AMD, a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy)-rated chipmaker expected to bring +21% earnings growth year over year on +26% revenue growth. We’ll also see results for Amgen AMGN, Skyworks Solutions SWKS and Chipotle CMG, all of which carry a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) rating into the prints.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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