Gong Xi Fa Cai!
Welcome to the Year of the Monkey. Stock markets were closed Monday in Shanghai and Hong Kong for Lunar New Year.
Investors will have to wait to respond to news that Chinese foreign exchange reserves dropped $99.5 billion in January to $3.23 trillion, the lowest level since 2012.
“The bigger question is how much the pace of capital outflows and FX reserve reduction slows in the coming months after the break for the Chinese New Year celebrations,” wrote Kit Juckes, Global Head of FX strategy at Societe Generale.
U.S. stock futures are falling on the Super Bowl hangover day. Crude futures have fallen below $31, and European markets have turned decidedly negative.
Here are the four things you need to know before the opening bell rings in New York:
1. Stock market movers — Sharp, Arm, Randgold, Credit Suisse, Chipotle: Sharp shares had a quiet trading day in Tokyo Monday, despite huge jumps last week on an expected bid by Foxconn, the manufacturer of the iPhone. Sharp is up 51% in 2016.
Chip designer Arm is the biggest faller in London ahead of results out Thursday. Arm’s fortunes seems tied to Apple as it designs chips for the iPhone.
Randgold is up nearly 3% in London on the back of the gold miner reporting “one of the best years in the company’s history,” despite the dire market for commodities.
Credit Suisse shares are down 0.5%. Its new CEO Tidjane Thiam has asked the board to slash his bonus after terrible results released last week.
Chipotle is closing every store for four hours today for a food safety meeting following an E. coli outbreak that now appears to be over.
2. Earnings: Hasbro is among the companies posting earnings updates ahead of the market open. Its shares have suffered in recent months while rival Mattel enjoyed a Barbie-fueled Christmas rally. Rumors of the two merging have been in the market for weeks.
Companies including 21st Century Fox, Yelp and Leapfrog will report after the closing bell.
3. International markets overview: European markets are down more than 1.5% in early trading, while the few Asian markets trading today shrugged off North Korea’s rocket launch on Sunday. The Nikkei ended 1% higher on the back of a weakening yen.
4. Friday market recap: The Dow Jones industrial average shed 1.3%, while the S&P 500 dropped 1.9% and the Nasdaq was down by 3.3%.
