Global markets have been mixed overnight with traders pausing to reflect on the flood of news we've seen this week. US index futures for the Dow, S&P are up 0.3% with the NASDAQ lagging a bit. Overseas, the FTSE and DAX are up 0.2% while the Hang Seng rose 0.3%. WTI crude oil is up 0.5%, while gold is steady.
Economic news has been light overnight so the focus has been on corporate earnings. Reports remain positive with Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), General Electric (NYSE:GE). McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD) and Honeywell (NYSE:HON) all beating the street.
The US dollar continues to outperform, with traders speculating a rate hike could come this year. EUR is still underperforming with traders taking a dovish read to ECB President Draghi's comments Thursday and speculating some kind of extension of the ECB QE stimulus program past the current March deadline could be announced in December.
Canada and the loonie may attract attention again today around the Canadian retail sales and inflation reports. Speculation about a potential Canada rate cut has increased following this week's Bank of Canada which saw dovish talk out of Governor Poloz and a cut to the bank's GDP forecasts.
There's been a lot of news for traders to digest this week and markets appear to be pausing for a rest. We also could see traders start to position for next week's GDP reports plus more earnings from big name companies like Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Boeing (NYSE:BA), Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO), Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT), Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA), Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) and many others.