tuesday market open the sound you hear is fingers tapping as investors await critical earnings from info tech giants over the next three days starting with microsoft msft and alphabet googl this afternoon meta platforms meta reports tomorrow afternoon followed by apple aapl and amazon amzn on thursday these five megacaps sometimes called the “faangs plus msft” command enough of a combined market capitalization to drive the overall market in one direction or another depending on their actual results and future guidance that’s why it could be a bit of a waiting game today for the markets before these particular numbers start filtering in yesterday’s rally seemed related to some weak pmi data early in the day along with talk that the federal reserve might moderate its ratehike regime late next year expectations of a late2023 fed pullback seem a bit lower this morning this afternoon msft and googl earnings should provide insight into the health of the cloud computing businesses after a june quarter that showed strength but at a slower rate from the start of the year cloud revenue is a good barometer of global business activity so earnings reports from these two megacap clo according to a recently published press release hexens a blockchain and web 30 security company has raised a whopping 42 million in seed funding led by prominent web 30 vc firm iosg ventures and other investors such as hash capital delta blockchain fund tenzor capital angel investors from polygon imtoken ventures and chapter one this seed fund will help hexens grow horizontally increasing its security coverage hexens will aim to create and subsequently release innovative products capable of positively impacting the blockchain cybersecurity industry since its launch a year ago hexens has been committed to securing digital assets and investors beyond expectations the novel blockchain security company seeks to deliver a nonpareil experience regarding the security of projects the hexens team deploys an array of customized approaches to meet the needs of projects while providing ordinarily unachievable results in the ecosystem hexens combines novel ideas with a comprehensive web 30 market vision as it seeks to scale upwards the team hopes to launch new and innovative products in 2023 with over 2 billion lost to malicious hackers in 2022 the need for a customerfocused security company with the right product intensifies hexens understands the market demand and has designed a set of innovative products possessing the capacity to rid off these hacks speaking about the partnership with hexens queenie wu partner at iosg ventures reveals that hexens’ undisputable expertise in zk technology solidifies their stance as the company to lead the next wave of innovations in the blockchain cybersecurity ecosystem “ the teams expertise in zk technology positions them well to ensure the next wave of industry innovations moreover products being built by hexens have the potential to become a standard toolkit for each developer and security researcher in the blockchain space” queenie wu stated as revealed by the company ceo sipan vardanyan the tech space is at risk of distrust if cybersecurity threats are not mitigated expeditiously the hexens team understands this and works to dispel all existing threats innovatively and appropriately “our unique methodologies and techniques that we have sharpened over a decade of business in cybersecurity enable us to see what the premature blockchain market needs we will soon release our first products to help builders security engineers projects companies and whole blockchains and ecosystems have peace of mind and stay safe today many businesses face a single point of failure while depending on technologies that store assets onchain our main goal is to set new standards and raise the expectations of what cybersecurity solutions could do” he added in addition to security audit services hexens according to the press release investigates and immediately responds to several security incidents and the investigation department comprises past osint competition winners who combine off and onchain expertise to provide verified accurate and wellinvestigated cybercrime reports unprecedentedly the department has identified and deanonymized hackers and have returned millions of usd worth of assets to their legitimate owners—an unparalleled feat in the cybersecurity industry ud giants and amzn later in the week should be an important bellwether to watch the two megacaps reporting later today have businesses that reach far beyond the cloud of course internet advertising will be a prime search target as investors pore over the googl results and earnings call and with msft one question is whether crumbling personal computer sales might slice demand for many of the firm’s benchmark software products both companies could be under pressure from currency issues considering their huge overseas exposure the greenback dominance this year hasn’t been friendly to the multinationals speaking of which the us dollar index dxy traded flat this morning near 112 a slight pullback from recent highs seems to be helping the stock market the last couple sessions two top generals led the earnings march this morning as general motors gm and general electric ge released quarterly results gm’s results were generally nice beating on earnings per share but coming up a bit short on revenue this has been a trend for the company since the pandemic cnbc noted because tight vehicle supplies have led to lower sales but the vehicles people are driving away in tend to be higherpriced ones like suvs and pickups gm kept its guidance unchanged which seemed to cheer investors another cheerful component was gm announcing it had cleared up a major clog in its supply chain earlier this year gm said it had 95000 cars sitting around waiting for parts this morning it announced it had cleared 75000 of those vehicles it should be interesting to see if ford f also improves on the supplychain front when it reports shares of gm rose more than 3 ahead of the opening bell ge’s earnings were generally good earnings per share fell but revenue was a bit higher and they were able to maintain their revenue growth outlook unfortunately their guidance was otherwise a bit mixed but shares rose ahead of the opening bell in other earnings news today coca cola ko looked good as the company’s been able to pass along costs but 3m mmm cut its outlook citing currency issues united parcel service ups was able to beat on eps despite revenue missing analyst estimates and noted that a drop in volumes was offset by higher prices while the news for the company seems to be well received by markets with shares of the logistics company trading higher the drop in volume seems to indicate a slowdown at the macro level overall guidance from big companies so far has been a mixed bag but that’s not necessarily a bad thing people came into earnings season expecting gloom and doom across the board with lots of guidance cuts but that hasn’t been the case the earnings “beat” rate is down but the focus is really on guidance and will probably continue to be some important data hits the wires soon after the market opens today including consumer confidence for october last month’s headline figure was a solid 108 up for the second month in a row and bolstered by strong jobs and wage growth the wall street consensus for october’s headline consumer confidence is 1055 investors worried about fed hawkishness would probably be cheered if the data came in worse than this a betterthanexpected reading might hurt the market this hasn’t been a good stretch for people who get seasick the major indexes continue to regularly swing 2 a day one direction or the other as you’d expect when the cboe volatility index® vix stays stubbornly above 30 as it has most of the last month it did drop below 30 early tuesday but not by much unfortunately the waves aren’t likely to calm much in the weeks ahead with next week’s federal open market committee fomc meeting looming at least now it’s the “quiet” period ahead of that meeting over the past several weeks fed speakers have driven at least some of the market’s upanddown whiplashes for the next week at least investors won’t have the fed to kick around to paraphrase a former us president however the european central bank might be on investors’ minds later this week when it meets the market has priced in a 75basispoint hike speaking of rate hikes blackrock blk issued a note to investors monday saying it expects the fed’s hikes to push the economy into recession if this message grows louder blk said it could stamp out any potential positive market impact from election day adding that it expects inflation to come down but to remain above the fed’s target of 2 recession remains a popular topic but the treasury market could be sending a conflicting signal the inversion of the 2year and 10year treasury yields in which the 2year yield tops the 10year yield an unusual situation that’s been associated with past recessions is narrowing as of late monday the 2year had only about a 20basispoint premium to the 10year down from well above 40 a week ago this could be temporary or could be a trend but it bears watching why the narrowing it’s mainly a drop in 2year yields which are more sensitive to fed policy just in the last day or two there’s been a shift in sentiment about where longerterm rates might go the fed isn’t exactly saying “uncle” yet but some market participants are getting a bit more optimistic that a fed pause followed by cuts might occur by late next year the yield gap rose again to 30 early tuesday as a sevenbasis point drop in the 10year yield down to 416 compared with just a 2point drop in the 2year yield to 446 it’s unclear if the buying in treasuries this week is the start of a trend or just another slight pause in the selloff there is a 2year note auction today on monday the sp 500® index spx climbed 44 points or 119 to 379734 while the dow jones industrial average dji rose 417 points or 13 to 3149962 the spx is now nearly 9 above its midoctober low but we’ve seen this movie before the technical charts remain bearish for the spx and analysts will likely call this a “bear market rally” unless the spx can push past the summer highs the nasdaq100® ndx lagged the others with about a 1 gain and the russell 2000® rut was far behind everyone rising only 035 weakerthanexpected preliminary manufacturing and services pmi from ihs markit could explain some of the market’s resilience monday according to briefingcom at this point any soft data goes into the positive column as far as fed worries are concerned treasury yields which had firmed early in monday’s session stepped back slightly after that data mega consumer names helped lead the way monday with disney dis home depot hd walmart wmt and nike nke recording solid gains stocks with exposure to china however showed signs of weakness after the country’s party conference ended with signals pointing to a continuation of its zerocovid policy on the qt raising rates is only one fed tool to slow economic growth there’s also quantitative tightening qt which the fed is already doing but could speed up if it sees the need two years of socalled quantitative easing qe doubled the central bank’s balance sheet to 9 trillion by mid2022 as it tried to stimulate the economy by purchasing bonds in june the fed slammed on the brakes by allowing up to 30 billion of treasuries and 175 billion of mortgagebacked securities to mature without reinvesting them that rose to 60 billion and 35 billion respectively last month so it’s unlikely the fed would decide to ramp up qt anytime soon given that doubling instead the fed is likely to continue at the current pace at least in the near term to watch for any impact but if inflation stays stubborn a more aggressive qt might be in the fed’s toolkit so tune in to fed chair jerome powell’s next press conference november 2 for any possible clues stealth rate hikes investors focusing on interest rates may not be paying enough attention to the additional impact of qt consider it the fed’s stealth option for slowing things down if its higherprofile rate hikes don’t work powell has implied qt could continue about 25 years ultimately shrinking the fed’s balance sheet by about 25 trillion the current qt is 95 billion per month but the fed would need to remove about 39 trillion from its balance sheet to shrink inflation back to its 2 target one analyst told barron’s recently that amount of qt would be the equivalent of adding around 400 basis points in additional rate hikes though it might not get the headlines you’d see if rates themselves climbed 400 basis points to 75 from the current 3 to 35 range the fed’s latest dot plot only envisions the benchmark rate rising to 46 where’s pe going in china as china’s communist party congress wrapped up over the weekend with what looked very much like the exit of the old guard pitchbook wonders whether a potentially more insular statedriven economy could be “a worrying development” for private equity pe investors the publication noted friday that “significantly fewer executives from private groups were invited” to this congress than in previous years pitchbook reported that china’s publicprivate “government guidance funds” now account for a “significant chunk of private markets activity” and cited figures from the economist that 2000 of these funds collectively raised nearly 1 trillion between 2015 and 2021 oct 26 september new home sales and earnings from boeing ba boston scientific bsx kraft heinz khc and waste management wm oct 27 q3 gross domestic product september durable goods and earnings from apple aapl mcdonald’s mcd caterpillar cat mastercard ma southwest luv merck mrk and altria mo oct 28 september personal income personal spending personal consumption expenditure pce prices october consumer sentiment and earnings from abbvie abbv aon aon chevron cvx and exxonmobil xom oct 31 happy halloween october chicago pmi and earnings from cna financial cna goodyear tire gt and stryker syk nov 1 start of the fomc meeting september construction spending the october ism manufacturing index and earnings from abiomed abmd dupont dd eli lilly lly pfizer pfe uber uber advanced micro devices amd and under armour uaa nov 2 fomc rate decision and earnings from allstate all cvs health cvs yum brands yum and zimmer biomet zbh nov 3 september trade balance and factory orders and earnings from exelon exc hyatt hotels h illumina ilmn kellogg k penn entertainment penn and marriott mar this post contains sponsored advertising content this content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice