  investor confidence and consumer confidence demonstrate a link between main street and wall street equity index futures are pointing to a higher open ahead of the fed announcement with sp 500 futures recovering all of tuesday’s losses in premarket trading the federal reserve wraps up its twoday meeting today with its traditional interest rate decision announcement and press conference it’s unlikely that the fed will say much different than what they have previously laid out the fed has been focused on reducing and ending its bondbuying program in march the fed is also expected to discuss its first rate hike this year in march investors will be trying to read the mind of fed chairman jerome powell’s by listening closely to his tone despite the fed’s desire to raise rates this year they’ve been relatively dovish and unwilling to commit to rate hike timing a more hawkish fed would probably be one that is willing to consider raising rates in each of its seven remaining meetings this year chances are the fed will remain relatively dovish but investors would like to see more details to the fed’s plans earnings season continues to roll on with att t reporting wednesday morning before the market open t beat on revenue and earnings estimates despite a 10 drop in revenue from its satellite tv company directv the drop was somewhat expected as it relates to many other pandemic plays the company rallied about 1 before the opening bell att is merging its warnermedia business with discovery disca disca was up 16 in premarket trading boeing’s ba earnings nosedived reporting a greaterthanexpected loss and lessthanexpected revenue analysts were aware of a number of write offs that would lead to a loss but they didn’t how big the write offs would be on the bright side ba maintained it’s 2022 earnings outlook premarket traders were unsure what to do with the stock immediately after the news it rallied and fell 23 from positive to negative but appears to be favoring the positive by about 2 moving over to healthcare abbott labs abt reported betterthanexpected earnings and revenue but still fell 167 in premarket trading the company saw revenue increases in nutrition diagnostics and medical device revenue after tuesday’s closing bell microsoft msft reported great earnings and revenue but failed to grow its cloud business causing the stock to drop 4 in afterhours trading however sentiment appears to have changed overnight because the stock was up 357 in premarket trading after the company increased its 2022 revenue guidance texas instruments txn had a big upside earnings surprise prompting the stock to rally 3 in afterhours trading and continue higher overnight rising to 405 before wednesday’s opening bell txn appears to have had a positive influence on chipmakers because other semiconductors are rising in premarket trading after wednesday’s close another slew of earnings announcement will come from companies like tesla tsla intel intc las vegas sands lvs and whirlpool whr looking outside of earnings announcements toymaker mattel mat has won the right to produce disney dis princess dolls that will be joining mattel’s barbie doll line the move edges out rival hasbro has mat rallied 85 in premarket trading dis rose 138 and has fell 022 despite monday’s nearly historic price swing that left the major indices closing in the positive the sp 500 spx and the nasdaq composite comp fell 122 and 228 respectively on the other hand dow jones industrial average dji was only slightly lower at 019 the dow appears to have been buoyed by half of its 30 companies reporting earnings tuesday let’s look at a couple of these companies american express axp was the biggest winner of dow constituents rallying 892 on betterthanexpected earnings but falling short on the revenue estimate axp also boosted its forecasts after hitting a record in credit card spending international business machines ibm wasn’t too far behind axp because it rallied 565 on rising earnings from its cloud business that helped the company beat earnings and revenue estimates johnson  johnson jnj also helped boost the dow by rising 286 on betterthanexpected earnings and revenue the company is still preparing to split into a consumer products company and a pharmaceutical company and jnj is busily preparing for the split on the downside verizon vz and 3m mmm both traded a little lower on the day reporting betterthanexpected earnings but falling short on revenues vz increased its forward earnings guidance which also helped the stock rise 047 in premarket trading but fell back into the negative and closed 011 lower on the day mmm contributed its success to its customer focus and the ability to manage supply chain issues which led to the stock rallying 175 before the bell but was unable to hold the gains and traded just 055 higher for the day lockheed martin lmt rose 371 after beating on top and bottom line numbers lmt reaffirmed its 2022 sales outlook which helped the stock rise 050 before the bell the federal trade commission is planning to file a lawsuit to stop lmt’s acquisition of aerojet rocketdyne ajrd the acquisition was expected to cost lmt 44 billion ajrd fell 1856 on the news former dow component general electric ge fell 598 after missing on its revenue estimates and providing lower future earnings guidance the company cited supply chain difficulties as a major reason for the issues going into monday about 766 of companies had reported betterthanexpected earnings this is above the longterm average of 659 but below the prior fourquarter average of 839 with the previous year’s earnings so strong investors are struggling to get excited about what they’re seeing in the last couple of articles i’ve discussed the cboe market volatility index vix as a measure of confidence or concern for investors the vix has shot up just shy of 40 which has been a level of high concern or fear for investors but dropped back to 30 before the close it spiked again to 36 on tuesday and closed around 31 these are all elevated levels that are above normal as investor confidence has fallen so has consumer confidence according to the conference board inc cb consumer confidence as had declined this month due to rising inflation and the omicron variant however the previous three months the cb recorded higher confidence stock prices often reflect gas prices so it should come as no surprise that changes in the investor confidence and consumer confidence are declining together laboring the point according to factset labor costs have been one of the most frequently mentioned topics during earnings conference calls it seems to be an unfortunate injustice that the rising cost of labor which allows workers to get further ahead could also be a precursor to recession the fed will be looking to curb the rising labor costs by slowing down the economy however with the great resignation prompting many people to quit their job to start a business among other things the fed can do little to incentivize workers to not start new businesses or take a break from working rising interest rates could slow the number of new businesses because borrowing costs could make it more expensive to get capital or higher rates should reduce consumption however the fed wants to address inflation not send the united states into a recession perhaps the rugged individualism that americans are known for continues to live in the hearts of its citizens because european central bank president christine lagarde observed that europe isn’t seeing the same kind of “quits rate” on that side of the atlantic this means the fed has a very unique problem cloud seeding cloudbased computing is a fancy term for “other people’s computers” which makes the security and transparency of cloud computing a bit suspect to some businesses owning their own servers can be expensive for companies because they must buy store and cool the servers however owning servers allows them to know what’s going on in their computers a business can better ensure that their and their customer’s data is safe this is one reason why banks haven’t embraced the cloud the same as other businesses additionally cloud space is becoming more and more concentrated among a few large companies concentrated servers could become an issue on par with the centralized electrical grids a major catastrophe in one area could have far reaching negative effects finally regulators are increasingly concerned about cloud computing giants the united kingdom’s prudential regulation authority is looking into the risks associated with disruption if cloud bank services fail or are hacked cloud computing companies were rising high when growth was everything but the changing market conditions appear to be bringing closer scrutiny to these companies