Oil prices stayed stable on Wednesday, allowing Wall Street a chance to recover a portion of the losses they sustained Monday and Tuesday.
The market rallied early this morning off stabilizing prices, plus optimism stemming from early fourth-quarter earnings reports. Experts were quick to note, however, that not a single energy company has yet to report earnings.
According to Nick Raich, CEO at the Earnings Scout, “the drop in energy-sector earnings estimates over the last 1-2 months is the worst deterioration we have measured in any sector since the financial sector earnings fell off a cliff in 2008.”
It will be interesting to see if the good feelings—and market rally–can survive the low expectations for earnings from the beleaguered energy sector.
The Federal Reserve released the minutes of their December meeting, in which they remained non-committal over the timeline for raising interest rates.
Here were the Wednesday numbers from Wall Street:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 17,584.52 (+212.88)
NASDAQ: 4,650.47 (+57.73)
S&P 500: 2,025.90 (+23.29)
