Investors digest a wave of earnings from the big players and oil dips after stock levels grew. The banking sector will be in spotlight today.

Stocks gained yesterday as investors digested a steady wave of earnings from big firms such as Coca-Cola and General Motors.

However, European markets are set to open slightly lower Wednesday morning due to weak earnings overnight from some of the tech giants in the U.S. such as Alphabet and Microsoft. Alphabet stock dropped 6% after the company released disappointing ad sales due to the cut down in spending from advertisers. Microsoft also dropped 6% after it seen a decline in revenue in its Azure cloud-computing business.

Oil prices slipped early hours on Wednesday after data showed that the crude stock level grew more than estimated last week. Data from API demonstrated that inventories rose by 4.5 million barrels in the week ending 21^st of October. Investors will be waiting to see the official confirmation from the EIA (Energy Information Administration) later in the session.

Today, the banking sector will be in the spotlight as the likes of Deutsche Bank, Santander and Standard Chartered all posted positive quarterly earnings.

Although, it is not just the earnings that the focus is on. A stream of data including services and manufacturing activity, indicates a slowdown in the world’s economies but at least it is a positive for growth stocks. Growth stocks have been slammed by increasing interest rates as the Fed tries to tame inflation.

Key developments today:

• U.S. New Home Sales (15:00 PM GMT)
• Crude oil inventories (15:30 PM GMT)
• Meta (Facebook parent) is set to report an EPS of $1.92 on revenue of $27.6 billion.
• Boeing is set to report earnings per share of 18 cents on revenue of $18.2 billion.
• Bristol-Myers Squibb is set to report an EPS of $1.82 on revenue of $11.1 billion.

(Sources: investing.com, reuters.com)