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• US equities have rebounded sharply, rising for three straight weeks.
• The ongoing earnings season has been highly successful.
• Some of the top companies to watch will be Cisco, Alibaba, and Grab.

American stocks had a great performance this week as the first-quarter earnings season came to a close. The Dow Jones indicator has risen for three straight weeks and is nearing its all-time high of $40,000.

Similarly, the Nasdaq 100 and the S&P 500 indices are all nearing their all-time highs. That’s because the earnings season has been highly successful. Data by FactSet shows that so far, companies have had blended earnings growth of 5.4%, its highest point since Q2’22.

Stocks also rallied after more signs emerged that the Federal Reserve will start to cut rates later this year after a series of weak economic numbers. Consumer confidence has tumbled, labor market is softening, while the manufacturing and services outputs have dived. 

Next week will be an important one for the financial market as more major companies release their results. The top company to watch on Monday will be Tencent, the biggest Chinese company by market cap. 

Retail companies like The Home Depot (HD), Alibaba (BABA), and Miniso (MNSO) will publish their results on Tuesday followed by Walmart (WMT) and JD.com (JD) on Thursday. These companies will provide more colour about the state of the retail sector in the two biggest countries globally.

The results will come out at a time when the SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT) has pulled back by 6.50% from its highest level this year.

The other important company to watch next week will be Applied Materials (AMAT), a company that manufactures products used widely in the semiconductor company. It is benefiting substantially from the ongoing trend in artificial intelligence.

The other top companies to watch will be Monday.com (MNDY), Baidu (BIDU), Take-Two Interactive (TTWO), Under Armour (UA), and Solventum (SOLV). I will focus more on Monday.com since its stock has crashed by over 23% after its last earnings report.

In Japan, some of its key banking groups like Mitsubishi UFJ, Sumitomo, and Mizuho Financial will publish their results on Wednesday.

In addition to these companies, US equities will react to the latest US Consumer Price Index (CPI) data that will come out on Wednesday. These numbers will be important because they will have an impact on when the Fed will slash interest rates.

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