Earnings season intensifies this week with Tesla (TSLA) reporting on Wednesday. However, Moneta's Aoifinn Devitt believes just as much attention needs to be paid to the likes of Intel (INTC) and IBM (IBM) as well as consumer sentiment stocks like Coca-Cola (KO) and Netflix (NFLX). For more live coverage of markets
Okay, let's get more on what we need to look out for this week with Ethan Devitt. She's senior investment advisor at Monetta. Ethan, thanks so much for joining us on Market Sunrise. Well, earnings certainly seem to be taking center stage this week. Got the likes of Tesla, Netflix, Coca-Cola, IBM, Intel. What's what's going to what's going to catch your eye?
I'm going to be looking at some consumer sentiment that comes out of these consumer names and also really interested to see what tech has to say. I think we know that the resilient consumer continues to be the one of the confounding features of the current marketplace. So let's see what the likes of Coca-Cola have to say.
And I mean, we mentioned Tesla there. It's obviously, Elon Musk certainly knows how to grab the headlines. Uh, do you think there's going to be more focus on his robot arm rather than the actual how many cars Tesla are selling right now?
And with Tesla, there seems to be the flooding of the zone around news flow. We've had the executive compensation news flow. We've had the shift away from robotics after there being maybe a focus on that for some time. Now shift into really focusing, let's see what happens when someone all of these incentives come off, and we know that they are battling really quite gruesome sales figures, especially in Europe and in the UK US as well. So I'd say we're going to be looking at that as an indicator, but I do think that the shift has moved away from Tesla onto the AI stocks. They really now are the beacon in terms of whether this AI wave, how long it has to run, and whether there are cracks forming.
Well, let's move on to that. We've got IBM and Intel reporting this week as well. Um, you know, the chip names have been, as you say, grabbing the headlines away from Musk, perhaps. What are you hoping to see from from these two?
Well, given that most of this is backward-looking, at Monetta, we've been focusing very much on what this so-called, I think what you call it, like a shell game, it appears certainly an interconnectivity around many of these AI stocks. And we've been trying to parse what would happen were one project to not come to pass. We've already heard in recent weeks about data centers that have not are not being built simply because the cost to communities of power there could be a setback. And we've seen this happen consecutively across numerous states in the US. So this is a bit of a I think an implementation flaw when it comes to some of this build-out strategy. And what we'll see is whether there's any indication of any slowdown. I don't expect there will be. I think we're still going to be backward looking, looking at these strong orders, at the strong momentum around expenditure. But certainly, let's look for the as Jamie Diamond has mentioned cockroaches in the private credit arena. Let
See if there are any cockroaches or to use the metaphor Canaries in the coal mine in the AI side too.
You got two in there rather than one there, uh Ethan. Uh let's move on to that. Zions Bank is reporting after the bell today. Um, what did you make of all the the noise out of the regional banks? You know, are are it I mean, is Jamie Diamond right?
Well, I certainly the cockroach metaphor did seem to grab the imagination a little bit more than the Canary and the coal mine. And I think it is sinister because this is coming off the back of the first brands and the tri-color. Really, you just they were I wouldn't call them scandals, but they were certainly rumblings of difficulties of foot in some of this underwriting that has gone on in this massive wave of private credit interest. So now two more regional banks have seemed to be have whether they've been sub standard due diligence practices or simply cracks in their in their credit landscape. And that is concerning. We saw though when this last happened in early 23 that it was very much an isolated incident. We did not see contagion. We know there's a big difference between the large banks and their diversified books and these regional banks which are much more concentrated. We've seen a wave of consolidation, so that's probably there. We saw that with J.P. Morgan and SVB. There's definitely the potential for these large banks to soak up and absorb and really shock absorb the regional banks. So I don't think this is systemic, but what it is an indication of is that at the seems with these high level of rates, we we do see some strain and some distress starting to creep in, and it's just when you have these books that are are concentrated, not well diversified by regional banks, it is a concern.