Thursday, May 14th, 2026

Pre-market futures are up at this hour, just rolling off their peaks but still impressive. Optimism abounds as President Trump speaks with President Xi in Beijing, Q1 earnings season continues at its robust pace, and apparently no news is good news when it comes to the war in Iran or the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The Dow is +416 points currently, the S&P 500 is +29 and the Nasdaq +67. The small-cap Russell 2000 is +12 points at this hour.

Cisco Systems CSCO shares are trading up +15% this morning, following its impressive fiscal Q3 report yesterday after the close. The tech equipment behemoth has now established itself as a winning player in the AI space, reporting record revenues and beating earnings estimates decisively. We also see a bevy of new economic data ahead of today’s opening bell.
 

Jobless Claims Tick Up, Stay Well-Behaved

Initial Jobless Claims for last week reached +211K, the highest level we’ve seen in a month and above the 205K anticipated. The prior week was revised down to +199K, which are absolute historic levels of low jobless claims. Continuing Claims also bumped up a tad, to 1.782 million from a downwardly revised 1.758 million the previous week, which is a level we haven’t seen since January of 2024.
 

Retail Sales for April Mostly In-Line with Expectations

As expected, April Retail Sales came in at +0.5% — less than a third of the downwardly revised +1.6% from the prior month, which was the strongest month for retail sales since March 2025, directly ahead of the “Liberation Day” tariffs of last year. Ex-autos, this number ebbs to +0.7%, 10 basis points (bps) lower than projected but less than half March’s +1.9%.

Minus autos and gasoline sales, we remain at +0.5%, as we do with the Control number, also at +0.5%. This was expected to come in at +0.4% and follows the upwardly revised +0.8% for March, which clearly was a strong month for retail sales across the board. Today’s +0.5% headline is the second-lowest of 2026 so far.
 

Imports & Exports Jump for April

The biggest differential in actual numbers versus estimates this morning is in April’s Import Prices: +1.9%, 100 bps higher than consensus and the loftiest mark since March of 2022. Ex-fuel, where obviously most of these higher prices are coming from, we’re still above expectations at +0.7%. Year over year, Import Prices climbed to heights not seen since October of 2022: +4.2%.

Exports also spiked to their highest levels since March of 2022: +3.3% — virtually doubling expectations. Year over year, +8.8% has not been seen on export prices since September of 2022. So while we appreciate taking in more on exports than we pay on imports, we’re nevertheless seeing more economic dats that points to a renewed tailwind behind inflation. 
 

Earnings Reports for Today: CSIQ, DDS, AMAT

Ahead of the open, Canadian Solar CSIQ shares are falling -13% despite outpacing estimates on both top and bottom lines in the company’s Q1 report this morning. However, this was largely due to a one-time tariff refund of $93 million; otherwise, the company’s forecast weakens.

Regional department store Dillard’s DDS shares are up +7% prior to the opening bell this morning, on an earnings beat of +58% to $16.04 per share. A $104 million settlement on credit card fees boosted results, but the stock is still in the red year to date.

After today’s close, Applied Materials AMAT is expected to bring +12% growth on earnings year over year on +8.4% on revenues. Investors may be expecting a bigger quarter than this, however, as shares are up +69% year to date and still climbing in today’s pre-market. The Silicon Valley-based semiconductor equipment supplier carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) ahead of today’s report.

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Key Earnings Reports For May 14, 2026