Target shares plunge as holiday sales miss estimates on weakness in toys and electronics - CNBC

Target was expected to be a winner this holiday season, amidst a sea of disappointing reports. But the big-box retailer said Wednesday that its holiday sales were weaker than planned.

Its shares tumbled more than 8% on the news. Walmart, which hasn't reported holiday results, also traded lower. Its stock was last down about 2%.

Target said its same-store sales during November and December were up just 1.4%, compared with growth of 5.7% a year earlier.

The company said that, despite missing the mark, it is maintaining a prior outlook for fourth-quarter earnings. It also said in a press release that the fourth quarter of 2019 remains on track to mark Target's eleventh consecutive quarter of same-store sales gains.

Target said it found strength in apparel and beauty, while lackluster performance in key holiday categories like electronics, toys and parts of its home business offset those gains.

CEO Brian Cornell said Target "faced challenges throughout November and December in key seasonal merchandise categories." But "because of the durability of our business model, we are maintaining our guidance for our fourth quarter earnings per share."

"While we knew this season was going be challenging, it was even more challenging than we expected," Cornell added in a separate blog post.

Especially this holiday season, Target was expected to be a winner in the toys category. The company has been devoting more square footage in stores to toys, following Toys R Us' liquidation. It has partnered with Disney to open mini Disney shops within certain Target shops. Target also is now powering the website of the Toys R Us brand that has relaunched post bankruptcy.

But this holiday season, Target said toy sales were about flat with the prior year. The company did say, however, that it continued to gain market share in toys throughout the holidays, based on tracking data provided by The NPD Group.

Target said electronics sales were down more than 6% in November and December, while sales of home items were down about 1%. Apparel sales, meantime, were up about 5%, beauty sales inched up roughly 7%, and food and beverage sales climbed about 3% during the holiday period, according to the company.

Overall in the retail industry, sales of electronics and appliances grew 4.6% from Nov. 1 through Dec. 24, while the home furniture and furnishings category was up 1.3%, according to a separate analysis of purchases by Mastercard Spending Pulse. The firm said the apparel category grew just 1%, while department store chains saw their overall sales drop 1.8%.

Target's digital sales rose 19% — thanks to more people utilizing the company's same-day options like curbside pickup when they buy online. Target said use of its same-day services grew more than 50% during November and December compared with 2018, driving about 75% of the retailer's overall digital sales growth this past holiday season.

Target said it now expects fourth-quarter same-store sales to fall in line with the 1.4% growth it experienced during November and December, compared with a prior outlook of 3% to 4% growth. It said this means full-year same-store sales should rise more than 3%. Same-store sales represent a key metric used by the retail industry to keep track of purchases made at stores open for at least 12 months.

Analysts had been calling for Target's same-store sales during the fourth quarter, which includes the holiday season, to be up 3.8%, according to a poll by Refinitiv.

"Our fourth quarter performance will benefit from productivity improvements in our stores and supply chain, as well as meaningfully lower clearance inventory compared with a year ago," Cornell said in the release.

Target's announcement on Wednesday might come as a shock to some, because the retailer was largely expected to have had a strong holiday season, while mall-based apparel retail chains and department store operators struggled through it.

Macy's, J.C. Penney and Kohl's all in recent days have reported same-store sales declines during the holiday season. Kohl's specifically called out its women's apparel business as its biggest weak link. And Target, meantime, proved in its latest fiscal quarter that its apparel sales are on fire.

While leggings maker Lululemon reported a strong holiday season, others like Victoria's Secret owner L Brands and discount chain Five Below added to the malaise.

Thanks to its investments in new private labels like a grocery line called Good & Gather, store remodels and mobile app updates, analysts say Target has been taking market share from struggling rivals. The Minneapolis-based retailer in November raised its annual profit outlook, to expect full-year adjusted earnings per share to fall within a range of $6.25 to $6.45. Those expectations weren't adjusted on Wednesday.

While holiday sales for key general merchandise categories climbed a meager 0.2% in 2019 compared with 2018, according to weekly point-of-sale data tracked by The NPD Group, there were "clear winners." The firm called holiday results overall "lackluster," thanks in part to companies pushing deals earlier and earlier in the year, thereby lessening the significance of historically key days like Black Friday.

The holiday season also had six fewer days in between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas this year compared with last, making for the shortest possible calendar. Many retailers said they kicked off promotions earlier because of the calendar setup, hoping to win shoppers before their peers.

Speaking about the holiday season in October, Cornell had said, "Every day is going to count."

On Wednesday, the CEO said Target noticed this holiday season that people are "more and more comfortable shopping later in the season." Target said that on Dec. 24 its employees prepared almost five times the number of products for curbside pickups compared with the same day in 2018.

The company also on Wednesday announced that its chief stores officer Janna Potts is retiring, to be replaced internally by Mark Schindele, effective immediately.

And it announced changes to the structure of its merchandising team — appointing Christina Hennington to executive vice president and chief merchandising officer of hardlines, essentials and capabilities, and Jill Sando to executive vice president and chief merchandising officer of style and Target's owned brands, also effective immediately.

Target's former chief merchandising officer Mark Tritton resigned late last year to take the CEO post at Bed Bath & Beyond.

Target, which has a market value of about $63.6 billion, has watched its shares rally more than 82% over the past 12 months. The stock on Dec. 20 hit an all-time intraday high of $130.24.

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2020-01-15 11:30:00Z
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Study says Grindr, OkCupid, and Tinder breach GDPR - ZDNet

Dating apps Grindr, OkCupid, and Tinder are allegedly spreading user information like sexual preferences, behavioural data, and precise location to advertising companies in ways that may violate privacy laws, according to a study conducted by the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC).

The study tracked the activity of 10 popular apps during the period June to November 2019 in order to identify how personal data is transmitted from these apps to commercial third parties.

The apps tested include the dating apps Grindr, Happn, OkCupid, and Tinder; the period tracker apps Clue and MyDays; the makeup app Perfect; the religious app Muslim: Qibla Finder; the children's app My Talking Tom 2; and the keyboard app Wave Keyboard.

See also: Russia says Tinder must share user data, private messages    

The ten apps were chosen for the study as they were the most popular apps on Google Play at the time in "certain categories where sensitive category personal data were deemed likely to be processed, such as data about health, religion, children, and sexual preferences". 

Only the Android versions of these apps were tested, with NCC explaining that this was due to Android being the largest mobile operating system worldwide, in addition to Google being a key player in the ad tech industry.

Following testing, a majority of the ten apps were found to transmit data to "unexpected third parties", with users not being clearly informed about where their information was being sent, and how it was being used. 

The study also found that Grindr was among the apps with the most glaring privacy issues as it failed to do the following: Share clear information regarding the way it shares data with non-service provider third parties; share clear information about how user data is used for targeted ads; and provide in-app options to reduce data sharing with third parties. 

Image: The Norwegian Consumer Council

When analysing the data flow from the Grindr app, the researchers observed the Twitter-owned company MoPub acted as a mediation network, which facilitated personal data transmissions to other third parties, who then used the data to determine whether they wanted to purchase advertisements directed toward Grindr users. 

According to the study, MoPub's advertising partners could also potentially distribute that user data to other companies under certain situations despite not receiving explicit consent from Grindr's users. For example, one of MoPub's partners, AppNexus, could potentially provide data such as users' IP addresses and advertising IDs to other companies such as its parent entity AT&T to sell and target ads, the study said. 

"AT&T can use the data from the online tracking industry in combination with first-party data from its TV boxes, in order further to refine its targeted advertising," it added.

Privacy-wise, Grindr encourages users to read the privacy policy from MoPub; meanwhile, MoPub's privacy policy recommends that consumers read the privacy policies of the company's 160 partners in order to understand how their personal data may be used. 

According to the study, although MoPub claims to rely on consent in order to process personal data, its partners do not necessarily use consent as a legal basis. This means that if a consumer wants to withdraw their consent from MoPub, the partners may choose not to respect this withdrawal. Thus, the consumer would have to track down each of those partners to ensure their data is not shared. 

"This is clearly an impossible task for anyone, illustrating the lack of consumer control when data is being shared widely across the adtech industry," the study said.

And where the consumers do have control, such as from opting out of location data tracking by changing their device settings or by not giving apps access to location data, the study said MoPub's advertising partners like AppNexus could still infer a user's location based on their IP address.

The NCC argues, through the study's findings, that there are widespread breaches of Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), especially given that key principles of that EU framework -- such as data protection by design and default -- are not present in a majority of the apps tested. 

With consent being a core component of the GDPR's application of data protection, the study added that the language of ad tech companies' privacy policies were often "incomprehensible" with "questionable legal basis".

Under the GDPR, the legal concept of consent requires that users receive clear and easily understandable information about what they are consenting to. Consent also needs to be explicit and freely, meaning that "users must actively opt in, rather than having to jump through hoops to opt out of data sharing", the study said. 

"In the cases described in this report, none of the apps or third parties appear to fulfil the legal conditions for collecting valid consent," it writes. 

In response to the study's findings, the Norwegian group has since filed complaints asking for domestic regulators to undertake investigations into Grindr and five ad tech companies [PDF] for possible violations of the European data protection law.

If the companies are found to be in breach of the GDPR, they could face fines of up to 4% of their global revenue. 

"The multitude of violations of fundamental rights are happening at a rate of billions of times per second, all in the name of profiling and targeting advertising," the NCC writes in the study's conclusion.

"It is time for a serious debate about whether the surveillance-driven advertising systems that have taken over the internet, and which are economic drivers of misinformation online, is a fair trade-off for the possibility of showing slightly more relevant ads."

In 2018, another Norwegian nonprofit group found that Grindr had shared users' HIV status with the third party analytics companies Apptimize and Localytics. Grindr subsequently announced that it had stopped the practice.

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2020-01-15 04:17:00Z
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JPMorgan posts big Q4 earnings beat in record year - Yahoo Finance

JPMorgan Chase’s (JPM), the largest U.S. bank by assets, kicked off earnings season for the big banks on Tuesday, with fourth-quarter results that beat Wall Street estimates.

The bank beat on the top and bottom lines, bolstered by higher lending and deal-making. The results sent JPM’s shares higher by nearly 2% from Monday’s close to $139.50.

Here were the key figures versus the expectations, according to analysts polled by Bloomberg.

• Revenue (adjusted): $29.2 billion vs $27.9 billion expected.

• Earnings per share (adjusted): $2.57 vs $2.36 per share expected

JPMorgan’s net income for the fourth quarter came in at $8.5 billion, up 21%. Even amid widespread economic uncertainty and market volatility, the bank posted record full-year net income of $36.4 billion, or $10.72 per share — making 2019 its most profitable year ever.

In a statement, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon highlighted the resilience and strength of U.S. consumers as he applauded a “solid year” of record revenue and income.

“While we face a continued high level of complex geopolitical issues, global growth stabilized, albeit at a lower level, and resolution of some trade issues helped support client and market activity towards the end of the year,” Dimon said.

“The U.S. consumer continues to be in a strong position and we see the benefits of this across our consumer businesses,” he added.

Indeed, brisk consumer activity was a major reason for JPMorgan’s success during the fourth quarter. The bank’s consumer and community units saw client investment assets up 27% and posted a 5% leap in average deposits.

Meanwhile, credit card sales volumes were up 10%, which Dimon noted was driven by a “robust holiday season” as merchant processing volumes climbed 7%. 

Net interest income, a closely-followed metric, came in at $14.3 billion, down by 2% amid a mix of lower interest rates, rising balance sheets and a boost to net interest income.

Elsewhere, JPMorgan maintained its No. 1 spot for global investment banking fees, with 9% of the wallet share in 2019. Dimon noted that the firm grew its investment banking wallet to the highest level in a decade, and held the top spot for the 11th consecutive year. 

During the quarter, the bank experienced a big rebound in trading, with total markets revenue coming in at $5 billion, up 56% from last year. Fixed income revenue rebounded 86% to come in at $3.4 billion, “benefitting from a favorable comparison against a weak prior year.” Equity markets revenue rose 15% to $1.5 billion, driven by higher revenue in prime and cash equities. 

The stock, traded on the New York Stock Exchange, gained more than 41% in 2019, outperforming the S&P 500 Index’s (GSPC) 25.8% rally during the year.

Dimon reiterated the firm’s commitment to investing and growing its lines of business. Last year, JPMorgan added more than 70 new branches across 16 markets, while expanding its commercial banking footprint internationally.

Dimon also touted that the firm became “the first U.S. bank to be approved for a majority-owned securities business in China.”

The CEO touted JPMorgan’s “large investments in technology, including AI, cloud, digital and payments, as well as other investments in innovation, talent, security and risk controls. These actions will help us continue to grow and serve our clients going forward,” he said.

Wells Fargo (WFC) and Citigroup (C) will also report on Tuesday, followed by Bank of America (BAC) and Goldman Sachs (GS) on Wednesday and Morgan Stanley (MS) on Thursday.

Julia La Roche is a Correspondent at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.

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• Gundlach says ‘biggest risk’ for markets in 2020 is a Bernie Sanders win

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2020-01-14 12:38:00Z
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Delta's fourth-quarter profit beats estimates thanks to cheaper fuel and strong travel demand - CNBC

A Delta Air Lines Boeing 767-300 landing in Amsterdam.

Nicolas Economou | NurPhoto | Getty Images

Delta Air Lines' fourth quarter profits topped Wall Street's expectations, as lower fuel prices and strong travel demand — particularly for high-priced premium tickets — lifted the Atlanta-based carrier's results and boosted shares more than 4% in premarket trading.

Before the market opened on Tuesday, Delta reported per-share adjusted earnings of $1.70, compared with analysts' expectations of $1.40 a share and a more than 30% increase from a year earlier.

Delta doesn't have the beleaguered Boeing 737 Max in its fleet, the plane that has been grounded since March after two fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed 346 people. Competitors American, Southwest and United do have the Max in their fleets and have had to scale back growth planes without the fuel-efficient jets cleared by regulators to return to service.

The crashed led to a ballooning crisis at Boeing that cost the previous CEO his job and drew ire from lawmakers over internal emails that showed Boeing employees gloating about bullying regulators into approving less-rigorous training than some had requested. Boeing's new CEO, General Electric aviation and Blackstone Group veteran Dave Calhoun, started Monday.

Delta's CEO Ed Bastian told CNBC's Phil LeBeau on Tuesday that the issues don't effect the carrier, which operates older Boeing 737 jets, directly.

"I think it's been widely reported that there's a culture issue at Boeing for some time now," Bastian said. "Dave will clean it up."

Delta reported net income of $1.1 billion, up 8% from the fourth quarter of 2018. Revenues in the three months ended Dec. 31 rose 6% from a year earlier to $11.44 billion, slightly above analysts' estimates. Revenue from Delta's premium cabins, such as business class grew 9% to $3.7% billion, more than twice the clip that main cabin revenue grew, to reach $5.24 billion in the fourth quarter.

Delta benefited from cheaper fuel and the unwinding of its minority stake in Brazilian carrier Gol, the result of Delta's new stake in Gol's larger South American competitor Latam.

Here's how Delta did in the fourth quarter of 2019 compared with what Wall Street expected:

• Adjusted earnings per share: $1.70 versus $1.40 expected.
• Revenue: $11.44 billion versus $11.35 billion expected.

Delta said it expects unit revenues to be flat to up 2% in the first quarter of 2020, and flat margins. The airline reiterated its 2020 guidance of earnings per share of $6.75 to $7.75.

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2020-01-14 12:02:00Z
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BlackRock CEO says the climate crisis is about to trigger 'a fundamental reshaping of finance' - CNBC

The chief of the world's largest money manager believes the intensifying climate crisis will bring about a fundamental reshaping of finance, with a significant reallocation of capital set to take place "sooner than most anticipate."

In an annual letter to CEOs published Tuesday, BlackRock Chief Executive Larry Fink said: "Climate change has become a defining factor in companies' long-term prospects … But awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance."

BlackRock's assets under management totaled almost $7 trillion in the third quarter of 2019.

Fink's comments come as business leaders, policymakers and investors prepare to travel to Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum next week.

The theme at this year's January get-together, which is often criticized for being out of touch with the real world, has been designated as "Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World."

"Climate change is almost invariably the top issue that clients around the world raise with BlackRock. From Europe to Australia, South America to China, Florida to Oregon, investors are asking how they should modify their portfolios," Fink continued.

"And because capital markets pull future risk forward, we will see changes in capital allocation more quickly than we see changes to the climate itself."

"In the near future — and sooner than most anticipate — there will be a significant reallocation of capital," he added.

'Defining issue of our time'

Alongside 20 other young climate activists, Sweden's Greta Thunberg has called on all of those attending the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps to stop the "madness" of ongoing investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction and "completely divest" from fossil fuels.

In an op-ed for The Guardian, published Friday, Thunberg — who was catapulted to fame for skipping school every Friday to hold a weekly vigil outside Swedish parliament in 2018 — said global leaders must also "end all fossil fuel subsidies."

Youth activist Greta Thunberg speaks at the Climate Action Summit at the United Nations on September 23, 2019 in New York City. While the United States will not be participating, China and about 70 other countries are expected to make announcements concerning climate change.

Stephanie Keith | Getty Images

Protesting against political inaction over climate change, the 17-year-old sparked an international wave of school strikes — also known as "Fridays for Future" — with millions of other children following suit in cities around the world last year.

The United Nations has recognized climate change as "the defining issue of our time," with a recent report calling the crisis "the greatest challenge to sustainable development."

'Climate change is different' to other crises

"Over the 40 years of my career in finance, I have witnessed a number of financial crises and challenges — the inflation spikes of the 1970s and early 1980s, the Asian currency crisis in 1997, the dot-com bubble, and the global financial crisis," BlackRock's Fink said.

"Even when these episodes lasted for many years, they were all, in the broad scheme of things, short-term in nature. Climate change is different."

"Even if only a fraction of the projected impacts is realized, this is a much more structural, long-term crisis. Companies, investors, and governments must prepare for a significant reallocation of capital," he added.

Australia has drawn global attention in recent months, with the country currently experiencing one of its worst bush fire seasons on record.

Record high temperatures and drought exacerbated by the climate crisis have ignited blazes that have killed more than two dozen people and destroyed 2,000 homes since September.

Nearly half a billion animals in Australia's New South Wales state are thought to have been killed by raging wildfires in the last couple of months too.

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2020-01-14 10:01:00Z
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BlackRock Will Put Climate Change at Center of Investment Strategy - The New York Times

Laurence D. Fink, the founder and chief executive of BlackRock, plans to announce Tuesday that his firm will make investment decisions with environmental sustainability as a core goal.

BlackRock is the largest in its field, with nearly $7 trillion under management, and this move will fundamentally shift its investing policy — and could reshape how corporate America does business and put pressure on other large money managers to follow suit.

Mr. Fink’s annual letter to the chief executives of the world’s largest companies is closely watched, and in the 2020 edition he said BlackRock would begin to exit certain investments that “present a high sustainability-related risk,” such as those in coal producers. His intent is to encourage every company, not just energy firms, to rethink their carbon footprints.

“Awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance,” Mr. Fink wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times. “The evidence on climate risk is compelling investors to reassess core assumptions about modern finance.”

The firm, he wrote, would also introduce new funds that shun fossil fuel-oriented stocks, move more aggressively to vote against management teams that are not making progress on sustainability, and press companies to disclose plans “for operating under a scenario where the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees is fully realized.”

Mr. Fink has not always been the first to address social issues, but his annual letter — such as his dictum two years ago that companies needed to have a purpose beyond profits — has the influence to change the conversations inside boardrooms around the globe.

And now Mr. Fink is sounding an alarm on a crisis that he believes is the most profound in his 40 years in finance. “Even if only a fraction of the science is right today, this is a much more structural, long-term crisis,” he wrote.

A longtime Democrat, Mr. Fink insisted in an interview that the decision was strictly business. “We are fiduciaries,” he said. “Politics isn’t part of this.”

BlackRock itself has come under criticism from both industry and environmental groups for being behind on pushing these issues. Just last month, a British hedge fund manager, Christopher Hohn, said that it was “appalling” of BlackRock not to require companies to disclose their sustainability efforts, and that the firm’s previous efforts had been “full of greenwash.”

Climate activists staged several protests outside BlackRock’s offices last year, and Mr. Fink himself has received letters from members of Congress urging more action on climate-related investing. According to Ceres and FundVotes, a unit of Morningstar, BlackRock had among the worst voting records on climate issues.

In recent years, many companies and investors have committed to focusing on the environmental impact of business, but none of the largest investors in the country have been willing to make it a central component of their investment strategy.

In that context, Mr. Fink’s move is a watershed — one that could spur a national conversation among financiers and policymakers. However, it’s also possible that some of the most ardent climate activists will see it as falling short.

Even so, the new approach may put pressure on the other large money managers and financial firms in the United States — Vanguard, T. Rowe Price and JPMorgan Chase, among them — to articulate more ambitious strategies around sustainability.

When 631 investors from around the world, representing some $37 trillion in assets, signed a letter last month calling on governments to step up their efforts against climate change, the biggest American firms were conspicuously absent.

BlackRock’s decision may give C.E.O.s license to change their own companies’ strategy and focus more on sustainability, even if doing so cuts into short-term profits. Such a shift could also provide cover for banks and other financial institutions that finance carbon-emitting businesses to change their own policies.

Had Mr. Fink moved a decade ago to pull BlackRock’s funds out of companies that contribute to climate change, his clients would have been well served. In the past 10 years, through Friday, companies in the S&P 500 energy sector had gained just 2 percent in total. In the same period, the broader S&P 500 nearly tripled.

In an interview, Mr. Fink said the decision developed from conversations with “business leaders and how they’re thinking about it, talking to different scientists, reading different research.” Mr. Fink asked BlackRock to research the economic impacts of climate change; it found that they are already appearing in a meaningful way in the form of higher insurance premiums, for fires and floods, and expects cities to have to pay more for their bonds.

Wherever he goes, he said, he is bombarded with climate questions from investors, often to the exclusion of issues that until recently were once considered more important. “Climate change is almost invariably the top issue that clients around the world raise with BlackRock,” he wrote in his letter.

He wrote that he anticipated a major shift, much sooner than many might imagine, in the way money will be allocated.

“This dynamic will accelerate as the next generation takes the helm of government and business,” he wrote. “As trillions of dollars shift to millennials over the next few decades, as they become C.E.O.s and C.I.O.s, as they become the policymakers and heads of state, they will further reshape the world’s approach to sustainability.”

While BlackRock makes its green push, the Trump administration is going in the opposite direction, repealing and weakening laws aimed at protecting the environment and promoting sustainability. Indeed, Mr. Fink’s effort appeared to be another example of the private sector pressing on issues that the White House has abandoned.

Still, Mr. Fink made plain that while he intends for the firm to consider climate risks, he would not pursue an across-the-board sale of energy companies that produce fossil fuels. Because of its sheer size, BlackRock will remain one of the world’s largest investors in fossil-fuel companies.

“Despite recent rapid advances in technology, the science does not yet exist to replace many of today’s essential uses of hydrocarbons,” he wrote. “We need to be mindful of the economic, scientific, social and political realities of the energy transition.”

BlackRock manages money for countries across the globe as well as states and municipalities across the nation. It could face opposition for its new stance in areas that benefit from fossil fuels, like countries in the Middle East or states where oil has become a significant part of their economies.

Mr. Fink said that because much of the money BlackRock manages is invested in passive index funds like those that track the S&P 500, the firm was unable to simply sell shares in companies that it felt were not focused on sustainability. But he did say that the firm could do so in what are known as “actively managed funds,” in which BlackRock can choose which stocks are included.

BlackRock also plans to offer new passive funds — including target-date funds that are based on a person’s age and are meant to be used to prepare for retirement — that will not include fossil fuel companies. Investors will be able to choose these instead of more traditional funds. To the extent that fossil fuel companies are in an index, BlackRock plans to push them to consider their eventual transition to renewable energy. Mr. Fink said the company would vote against them if they are not moving fast enough.

“We will be increasingly disposed to vote against management and board directors when companies are not making sufficient progress on sustainability-related disclosures and the business practices and plans underlying them,” he wrote.

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2020-01-14 08:00:00Z
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US futures point to slightly higher open ahead of bank earnings - CNBC

U.S. stock index futures edged higher Tuesday morning ahead of the kick off of earnings season.

Around 4:50 a.m. ET, Dow futures indicated a positive open of about 25 points. Futures on the S&P and Nasdaq were also higher.

Investors will be keeping an eye on earnings with some of the biggest lenders officially opening the latest round of corporate releases. Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo are due to report before the bell. Delta airlines is also set to update investors Tuesday.

On Monday, U.S. equities resumed the rally seen since last week after the United States removed China from a list of currency manipulating countries. The announcement came just a few days before the two largest world economies are due to sign a "phase one" trade deal in Washington, D.C.

Ahead of the signing, the South China Morning Post reported that the trade war is "not over yet" and that Wednesday's ceremony will be more like the "first round of a game."

On the data calendar, the National Federation of Independent Business will release its latest small business survey at 6 a.m. ET, followed by new U.S. inflation figures at 8:30 a.m. ET.

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2020-01-14 06:32:00Z
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