5 things to know before the stock market opens Monday – CNBC

Here are the most important news items that investors need to start their trading day:

Stock are headed into this week on a positive wave. While the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed down slightly Friday, the three major U.S. indices polished off a strong week. The blue-chip Dow, in fact, had its best week since March, finishing all five days higher. After softer but still strong jobs numbers for June and improving inflation numbers, investors are eager to see what the Federal Reserve will do at its policy-setting meeting later this month. The market is betting on the central bank resuming its rate-hiking agenda after a pause last month, but with economic numbers looking solid, the question becomes about how much longer the Fed will keep raising. Follow live market updates.

Investors got a taste of the new earnings season last week with reports from PepsiCo, JPMorgan Chase and Delta Air Lines. This week gets even busier with multiple big names on the schedule, including Netflix and Tesla. Will it be a bumpy ride this quarter? Wall Street thinks so. Analysts expect S&P 500 companies’ earnings will be down more than 7% versus a year earlier, according to FactSet. Here are the major companies on deck this week:

Tuesday: Bank of America, Morgan Stanley (before the bell)
Wednesday: Goldman Sachs (before the bell); Netflix, Tesla, IBM, United Airlines (after the bell)
Thursday: Johnson & Johnson, American Airlines (before the bell)

Sony ceased its standoff against Microsoft‘s deal to buy Call of Duty game maker Activision Blizzard, just days before the agreement was set to close. Sony, which makes the PlayStation console, had expressed concerns as recently as last month that the Microsoft-Activision deal would be anti-competitive, effectively giving the tech giant exclusive control over the lucrative Call of Duty franchise. But on Sunday, the two sides said they reached a long-term agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation after the Activision deal is settled. While that’s not certain, Microsoft’s chances of pulling it off have grown substantially after federal courts rejected the Federal Trade Comission’s attempts to stop the deal. Microsoft and Activision aim to sew it up Tuesday.

With striking writers and actors shutting down production, weak advertising revenue and persistent streaming losses hurting bottom lines, blockbusters coming up short, and traditional TV on its way out, the U.S. media industry is in big trouble. No path forward looks particularly great, either. Netflix, the great disruptor, is set to kick off media earnings this Wednesday. While the streaming giant is in relatively good shape – its stock has surged back after last year’s slump, and it can rely on international productions during the strikes – its rivals are increasingly facing a series of existential crises. For instance, Disney CEO Bob Iger effectively put his company’s TV assets, including its ABC broadcast network, on sale last week after he revealed that the television business is doing worse than he’d feared. Will consolidation and fire sales be the answer? CNBC’s Lillian Rizzo breaks it down.

Russia walked away from the Black Sea grain deal, hours before it was set to expire, threatening food security for millions. The agreement, which was first struck a year ago, enabled Ukraine to export grain to several markets. The move comes after Turkey, a key facilitator of the grain pact, dropped its opposition to Sweden joining NATO, angering Russia. Elsewhere, Russia claimed Ukraine struck a bridge connecting Russia to Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, which Vladimir Putin’s forces illegally annexed nine years. ago. Follow live war updates.

– CNBC’s Samantha Subin, Rohan Goswami, Jordan Novet, Lillian Rizzo, Ruxandra Iordache and Natasha Turak contributed to this report.

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