Equities are looking to start the day a little lower, but futures are off their lows of the overnight session. Economic data so far this morning has been positive as the Philly Fed and both Initial and Continuing Jobless Claims all came in slightly better than estimates. The pace of earnings reports is starting to pick up, but we still haven’t seen much of an improvement to the sell the news reaction that has been in place for over a month now.

With regards to the earnings sell the news trend, we would note that of the 30 US companies that reported earnings from the close on Tuesday through the open on Wednesday, only 12 finished higher yesterday. Overall, the median return of the 30 stocks was a decline of 0.92% compared to the S&P 500, which was flat on the day. The way the market has been punishing stocks that report earnings of late, there hasn’t been any incentive to buy a company ahead of its earnings report.