Tesla, Verizon, Coca-Cola, Alphabet, and More Stocks to Watch This Week

(Barron’s)

The Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 indexes both made new closing highs last Thursday before basically trading flat on Friday to close out the week. Equities benefited from relatively benign inflation readings released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The second-quarter earnings season also got off to a solid start, with more than 80% of S&P 500 companies beating sales and earnings estimates so far.

This week will see roughly 100 companies from the benchmark index reporting results, including two of the Magnificent Seven. Verizon Communications will kick off the week by releasing earnings on Monday, followed by Coca-Cola, Danaher, and Texas Instruments on Tuesday. Alphabet, IBM, and Tesla will headline Wednesday’s results, while Thursday will see releases from Blackstone, Honeywell International, and Intel.

Wall Street will also be looking ahead to the Federal Open Market Committee’s July 29-30 monetary-policy meeting, as the FOMC enters its usual blackout period the second Saturday before the confab. Traders have priced in a less-than-5% chance of an interest-rate cut at the meeting. But in a rare move, Fed governor Christopher Waller made his case for cutting rates this past week at the late-July meeting.

On the economic front, we will get an update on the sluggish housing market with the release of existing-home sales from the National Association of Realtors on Wednesday, followed by new-home sales data from the Census Bureau on Thursday. S&P Global will also release its Manufacturing and Services Purchasing Managers’ Indexes on Thursday.

Monday 7/21

Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Domino’s Pizza, NXP Semiconductors, Roper Technologies, Steel Dynamics, Verizon, and W.R. Berkley report earnings.

Tuesday 7/22

Avery Dennison, Baker Hughes, Capital One Financial, Chubb, Coca-Cola, CoStar Group, Danaher, D.R. Horton, Enphase Energy, Equifax, EQT, General Motors, Genuine Parts, Halliburton, IQVIA Holdings, Interpublic Group, Intuitive Surgical, Invesco, KeyCorp, Lockheed Martin, MSCI, Northrop Grumman, Paccar, Philip Morris International, PulteGroup, Quest Diagnostics, RTX, SAP, Sherwin-Williams, Synchrony Financial, and Texas Instruments release quarterly results.

Wednesday 7/23

Alphabet, Amphenol, Boston Scientific, AT&T, Chipotle Mexican Grill, CME Group, Crown Castle, CSX, Fiserv, Freeport-McMoRan, General Dynamics, GE Vernova, Globe Life, Hasbro, Hilton Worldwide Holdings, IBM, Lamb Weston Holdings, Las Vegas Sands, Lennox International, Molina Healthcare, Moody’s, NextEra Energy, Northern Trust, NVR, O’Reilly Automotive, Otis Worldwide, Packaging Corp of America, Raymond James Financial, Rollins, ServiceNow, SS&C Technologies Holdings, TE Connectivity, Teledyne Technologies, Tesla, Thermo Fisher Scientific, T-Mobile US, United Rentals, and Waste Connections announce earnings.

The National Association of Realtors reports existing-home sales for June. Economists forecast a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4 million homes sold, roughly even with May. Sales of existing homes are near 15-year lows.

Thursday 7/24

Ameriprise Financial, A.O. Smith, Blackstone, CenterPoint Energy, Deckers Outdoor, Deutsche Bank, Digital Realty Trust, Dover, Dow, Edwards Lifesciences, Healthpeak Properties, Honeywell International, Intel, Keurig Dr Pepper, L3Harris Technologies, Labcorp Holdings, LKQ, Mohawk Industries, Nasdaq, Newmont, Pool Corp., Southwest Airlines, Textron, TotalEnergies, Tractor Supply, Union Pacific, Valero Energy, VeriSign, West Pharmaceutical Services, Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies, and Weyerhaeuser report quarterly results.

The European Central Bank announces its monetary policy decision. The ECB is widely expected to keep its key short-term interest rate unchanged at 2%. The central bank has cut rates eight times, for a cumulative two percentage points since June of 2024.

S&P Global releases both its Manufacturing and Services Purchasing Managers Indexes for July. Consensus estimates are for a 52.7 reading for the Manufacturing PMI and a 53.1 for the Services PMI. Both indexes came in at 52.9 in June.

The Census Bureau reports new-home sales for June. Expectations are for a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 650,000 new single-family homes sold, 27,000 more than in May.

Friday 7/25

Aon, Booz Allen Hamilton Holding, Centene, Charter Communications, and Phillips 66 release earnings.

The Census Bureau releases the durable-goods report for June. The consensus call is for a 10.8% month-over-month decline in new orders for durable manufactured goods, to $306.5 billion. Orders jumped 16.4% in May, the largest increase since 2014. This report has been particularly volatile in recent months, partially due to tariff front-running.

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