Earnings Results And Housing Data In Focus

As we mull earnings reports from IBM (NYSE:IBM) and United Continental (NYSE:UAL) from Tuesday afternoon and more Wall Street investment firms this morning, we also see fresh data on June Housing Starts and Permits. Both headline numbers came in hotter than expected: 1.215 million on June starts (up 8.3%) and 1.254 million in permits (up 7.4%). (These results are seasonally adjusted and annualized.)

Housing Starts in May also saw a positive revision from 1.09 million units to 1.12 million. Analysts had only expected a 5.5% increase in starts and just 1.7% in permits. Starts were bolstered by a strong 849K in single-family housing. All this said, we are still well off the multi-year highs of roughly 2 million annualized housing starts per month.

Zacks Rank #4 (Sell)-rated Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) topped estimates on both top and bottom lines ahead of the bell this morning: 87 cents per share beat the 76 cents expected, and the $9.5 billion in revenues easily surpassed the $8.9 billion in the Zacks consensus estimate. These results beat fairly low bars for Morgan in the quarter, however: our consensus earnings estimate for Q2 had tumbled more than 10% in the past month.

U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) also beat expectations for its Q2 earnings and revenues, albeit more slightly: 85 cents per share beat by a penny, and revenues of $5.49 billion outperformed the $5.46 billion in the Zacks consensus. This is a very typical quarterly performance for the Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock: the trailing 4-quarter average earnings beat — in which the bank topped expectations each time — was 1.55%.

Wednesday after the bell will give us a breather of sorts, with American Express (NYSE:AXP) and T-Mobile U.S. (NASDAQ:TMUS) reporting after the bell, but the real marquee names of earnings season begin after the bell with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Thursday afternoon, and then the dam really breaks open next week.