February 8, 2015 The Week Ahead

The S&P 500 had three +1% daily moves this week, closing at 2055.47. However, the futures are selling off this evening, after earlier today, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras laid out plans to remove austerity measures. Clearly, the focus next week, will be on Greece, as Eurozone finance ministers will meet on Wednesday, in hopes of some kind of resolution.

The VIX closed the week at 17.29, however, a hiccup out of Europe could send it back above 20.

The crude oil market was extremely volatile this week. The daily moves during the week were: Monday +2.89%, Tuesday +7.02%, Wednesday -8.67%, Thursday +4.19% and Friday +2.38%. If Equity traders are participating in this trade by playing energy companies, airline companies and ETFs, just to name a few. A couple of websites have been circulating the comments made by an OPEC official that crude oil prices could one day reach $200 a barrel. Is the bottom in on crude oil? We’ll have to wait and see for now.

There are a number of earnings that traders will be watching this week, some include:

• Monday: Loews Corporation (L)
• Tuesday: Coca-Cola (KO), CVS Health Corp (CVS), Akamai Technologies, Inc. (AKAM), and Western Union Company (WU)
• Wednesday: PepsiCo (PEP), AOL, Inc (AOL), Applied Materials, Inc. (AMAT), ARM Holdings plc (ARMH), Baidu Inc (BIDU), Mondelez International Inc. (MDLZ), Mosaic Co (MOS), NetApp Inc. (NTAP), NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA), Tripadvisor Inc. (TRIP), Tesla (TSLA), Tesoro Corporation (TSO), Whole Foods Market, Inc. (WFM), Zillow Inc. (Z), FireEye Inc. (FEYE), Time Warner Inc (TWX), and Metlife (MET)
• Thursday: Groupon (GRPN), Kellogg Company (K), Kraft Foods (KRFT), Zynga Inc. (ZNGA), American International Group Inc (AIG), Apache Corporation (APA), CBS Corporation (CBS), Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc (DPS), King Digital Entertainment PLC (KING), and Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd (MPEL)
• Friday: Exelon Corporation (EXC)

Economic data that traders will be watching this week include:

Thursday: European Monetary Union-Industrial Production at 5:00 AM EST. Jobless Claims at 8:30 AM EST., Retail Sales at 8:30 AM EST

The economic data is rather light this week in the US, however, there are some important numbers coming out from the rest of the world. This includes: Chinese Consumer Price Index, Swiss Consumer Price Index, German and French GDP Flash.

As we’ve mentioned now for weeks, as traders it’s important to stay nimble and take profits when you get them. We’ll be back on Tuesday for the next recap.