Following the three-day weekend in observance of the Easter holiday, futures ahead of Monday’s open are up across the board — Dow, Nasdaq, S&P 500, even oil prices (both WTI and Brent) were up ahead of the morning bell. The Nikkei was up overnight, although the Shanghai slipped in its first trading session of the week.
Personal Income and Spending numbers for February were released this morning, more or less in line with expectations. Personal income rose 0.2 percent, but the revision to January’s number was more telling: 0.1 percent is the current read, but initially this was 0.5 percent. Consumer spending rose 0.1 percent in February. Further, Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) also rose 0.1 percent in February. Low and slow, the economic grind continues…
Over the weekend, Time Warner’s (TWX – Analyst Report) Warner Brothers Entertainment released “Batman vs. Superman,” which set a new box office record for a non-summer release: $170 million in U.S. sales marks the fourth-biggest opening weekend in box office history. The film — widely panned by critics, by the way, though action movie fans clearly pay little regard to such things — brought in a cool $424 million globally, meaning the hefty $250M price tag to make the film has already been made back.
Time Warner stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), but with a Value style score of B (overall VGM — Value, Growth, Momentum — of C). Can this first blockbuster movie of 2016 generate a windfall for TWX shares going forward? Stay tuned…
European markets were closed for Easter Monday today, but will resume trading tomorrow on this, the last trading week of the calendar Q1. This means we’ll be taking a longer look at Q1 trends ahead of earnings season, which begins in a couple weeks.
