Stocks Closed Higher Yesterday, Earnings And Inflation Are This Week's Main Focus  Image: Bigstock Stocks were higher across the board yesterday with the Dow leading the way with a 1.16% gain, followed by the S&P 500 with 0.90%. Yesterday's gains seemed like a delayed reaction to last Friday's weaker than expected Employment Situation report. On Friday, traders cheered the news as stocks rallied for most of the day, but sold off by the close. Nonetheless, the initial optimism stemmed from the idea that an overly hot jobs market would only provide more reason for the Fed to raise rates again come September. But a weaker (albeit still growing) jobs market would show their rate hikes are having an impact, and maybe the Fed can hit pause again in September, or call it quits altogether. Yesterday's gains essentially picked up what the market gave up midday on Friday. But with last week's jobs report out of the way, all eyes will turn to Thursday's Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation report, and then Friday's Producer Price Index (PPI) inflation report. The Fed has acknowledged that inflation has come down, but not enough. And that there's more work to be done. Yet they have repeatedly stressed that they will remain data dependent. So every inflation report between now and September 19-20 (the next FOMC meeting) will be closely watched for any clues as to what the Fed might do as a result. In the meantime, we've got a busy week of earnings ahead. Between today and the rest of the week we'll hear from 1,693 companies, with 546 on deck for today, including biggies Eli Lilly, UPS, Duke Energy, Datadog, and Chinese EV maker Li Auto, to name a handful. On the economic report front today we'll get the NFIB Small Business Optimism Index, the International Trade in Goods and Services report, and Wholesale Inventories. But again, it's the inflation reports that are this week's main events. See you tomorrow,  Kevin Matras
Executive Vice President, Zacks Investment Research | 
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