U.S. Stock Market Outlook | Three Major Index Futures Rise Together, Earnings Season Kicks Off

1. As of October 13 (Monday) before the market opens, the three major U.S. stock index futures are all up. As of the time of writing, Dow futures are up 0.77%, S&P 500 futures are up 1.14%, and Nasdaq futures are up 1.69%.

1. As of the time of writing, the German DAX index is up 0.21%, the UK FTSE 100 index is down 0.06%, the French CAC40 index is up 0.23%, and the Euro Stoxx 50 index is up 0.54%.

1. As of the time of writing, WTI crude oil is up 1.26%, priced at $59.64 per barrel. Brent crude oil is up 1.13%, priced at $63.44 per barrel.

Market News

U.S. stocks face a critical earnings report week! Six major industry performances become the market "touchstone," can they hedge against the shadow of political deadlock? Due to escalating trade war risks and the ongoing U.S. federal government shutdown, market sentiment has rapidly deteriorated, leading to a "Black Friday" for U.S. stocks last week. In the upcoming week, due to the continued political deadlock in Washington, the market will not receive updates on several key economic data, including import prices, retail sales, and initial jobless claims. The new earnings season for U.S. stocks will kick off this week, with the performances of the six major U.S. banks—JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo—taking center stage. The market expects these six banks to report strong third-quarter results, benefiting from a robust recovery in investment banking and the resilience of the U.S. economy, which keeps borrowers in good shape and supports the consumer and commercial loan sectors.

Bull market faces a test! The options market indicates that U.S. stocks will experience the most turbulent earnings season since 2022. U.S. stock investors are once again preparing for market volatility in the upcoming earnings season. Data shows that the stock options trends for S&P 500 index constituent companies indicate that stock prices are expected to fluctuate by an average of 4.7% after earnings announcements. This level of volatility is similar to that observed in July, when the expected price change was the highest since the earnings season began in 2022, with the start date of the earnings season based on JP Morgan's (JPM.US) earnings announcement date. The rise in options prices highlights the risks facing the U.S. stock bull market, especially after the S&P 500 plummeted due to Trump's threat of imposing higher tariffs on China. In addition to the uncertainty brought by Trump's economic policies and trade disputes on corporate profits, concerns about the U.S. government shutdown and the potential bubble risk in AI stocks are also present The US stock market bull market celebrates its third anniversary! The "tech unicorn show" is hard to sustain, and the US stock market urgently needs to "expand its circle" to survive. The current bull market in the US stock market will celebrate its third anniversary this past Sunday, but if history serves as a reference, it needs to quickly broaden its upward range to maintain momentum. Data shows that the S&P 500 index has risen 83% since the current bull market began on October 12, 2022, with a market capitalization increase of approximately $28 trillion. Before the sell-off last Friday triggered by US President Trump’s tariff threats, the index's increase had once reached 88%. According to CFRA Research, even after this pullback, the S&P 500 has still risen 13% over the past 12 months, which is double the average increase in the third year of a bull market. Since World War II, there have been 13 bull markets in the US, of which 7 extended into the fourth year, with an average cumulative increase of 88%.

Staggering scale! The US Department of Defense plans to spend $1 billion to stockpile critical minerals to strengthen strategic reserves. The US Department of Defense is planning to procure critical minerals worth up to $1 billion as part of its latest initiative to enhance metal supply security and ensure the supply of raw materials needed for the US defense system and advanced technologies. According to documents recently released by the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), this action marks one of the largest expansions of the US strategic material reserves in years. A former US Department of Defense official described the plan as "well thought out and far-reaching," noting that the Department of Defense is "actively seeking new strategic resources and materials" to maintain national security. Another former official stated that the scale of this action—approximately $1 billion—indicates that the US Department of Defense is significantly accelerating its efforts to rebuild strategic reserves.

Tariff storm resurfaces, Wall Street bets on a "new safe haven"—Chinese value stocks. As the latest round of US-China trade tensions significantly escalates, top strategists from Wall Street financial giants indicate that, in addition to gold and US Treasuries—two traditional safe-haven assets—global investors should also shift their focus to a new type of safe haven: the relatively cheap and defensive value stock sector in the Chinese stock market. Furthermore, from a longer-term stock investment perspective, Chinese tech stocks will still be one of the most favored market sectors by investors. With the "TACO trade," which bets on a significant easing of the Trump administration's tariff stance, potentially sweeping the globe again after a six-month hiatus, popular Chinese tech stocks closely related to artificial intelligence may become a key allocation sector for global funds in the medium to long term.

OPEC maintains global oil demand growth expectations, expects a significant narrowing of the supply gap next year. OPEC stated on Monday that it is maintaining its global oil demand growth expectations for this year and next, and expects the market supply gap to narrow significantly by 2026 as OPEC+ accelerates its production increase pace. OPEC+ has recently increased oil supply, having decided to withdraw some production cuts faster than originally planned. OPEC's report on Monday noted that while oil demand is expected to remain stable, OPEC+ raised its daily production by 630,000 barrels to 43.05 million barrels in September, reflecting the implementation of previously approved production increase quotas. According to calculations, if OPEC+ maintains the production level of September, the average demand for OPEC+ oil in the market is about 43.1 million barrels per day, indicating that the global oil market's supply gap is only 50,000 barrels per day

Individual Stock News

Is the 370 billion surge just a flash in the pan? Oracle (ORCL.US) AI conference becomes a key verification moment. This week, Oracle will have the opportunity to prove to investors that its stock price surge, which has resulted in an approximate $370 billion increase in market value this year, has a solid foundation. The software manufacturer will kick off a four-day "AI World Conference" in Las Vegas on Monday. The focus of the conference will be on Oracle's cloud computing business, which has driven its stock price up 76% this year, making it one of the best-performing components of the S&P 500 index in 2025. This conference comes at a time when the market is concerned that Oracle is sacrificing profits to rent computing power to AI companies like OpenAI. Last week, media reports indicated that Oracle's cloud business profit margins were below most Wall Street expectations, leading to a 7.1% intraday drop in its stock price on Tuesday. Oracle has predicted that revenue from this business will surge by 700% over the next three fiscal years.

REIT giant Tritax acquires Blackstone (BX.US) UK warehouse assets for £1 billion, partially paying with 9% equity. Blackstone has agreed to sell a portfolio of UK warehouse assets valued at £1 billion (approximately $1.3 billion) to Tritax Big Box Real Estate Investment Trust, a deal that will give the alternative asset management company a partial stake in the owner. According to a statement released on Monday, Tritax will pay £632 million in cash (funded by a £650 million loan) and issue £375 million in new shares to Blackstone Group, which will give the New York-based Blackstone approximately 9% equity. Tritax will issue shares to Blackstone Group at a price of 161 pence per share, a 13.5% premium over last Friday's closing price, but below the reported EPRA net asset value of 188.17 pence per share for the six-month period ending in June.

After the plunge, decisive action! MARA (MARA.US) splurges $46 million to bottom fish Bitcoin. Following a historic plunge in the cryptocurrency market, institutional investors seem to view this pullback as a good opportunity for positioning rather than the beginning of a prolonged downturn. Reports indicate that Bitcoin mining company MARA Holdings recently made a significant purchase of 400 Bitcoins from institutional cryptocurrency liquidity provider FalconX, valued at $46.29 million. According to Bitcoin Treasuries Net data, the transaction was completed through MARA's "3MYao" wallet address. After the transaction, the publicly listed mining company’s total Bitcoin holdings surpassed 53,000, continuing to rank second in corporate holdings, only behind Strategy (MSTR.US), which holds 640,031 Bitcoins.

AI demand drives chip prices up, Samsung Electronics' Q3 profit may hit a three-year high. Driven by a surge in server demand as customers rebuild inventory, memory chip prices continue to rise, and the market expects Samsung Electronics' third-quarter profit to reach a new high since 2022. According to LSEG SmartEstimate's forecast from 31 analysts, the world's largest memory chip manufacturer is expected to achieve an operating profit of 10.1 trillion won (approximately $7.11 billion) for the July-September period in 2025, a 10% increase compared to the same period last year This forecast focuses more on the views of analysts with a high historical prediction accuracy. The recovery is mainly attributed to the increase in pricing of traditional memory chips, effectively offsetting the impact of weak sales of high-bandwidth memory chips. Since Samsung has not yet supplied the latest HBM products to NVIDIA (NVDA.US), its HBM chip business performance has lagged behind.

Important Economic Data and Event Forecast

At 00:10 Beijing time the next day: 2026 FOMC voting member and Philadelphia Fed President Harker will deliver a speech.

TBD The World Bank and IMF will hold the 2025 Autumn Annual Meetings, where global financial leaders will gather until October 18.

Earnings Forecast

Tuesday pre-market: Ericsson (ERIC.US), JP Morgan (JPM.US), Wells Fargo (WFC.US), Goldman Sachs (GS.US), Citigroup (C.US), BlackRock (BLK.US), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.US)