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Bank Stocks Earnings Scorecard, Fed Minutes, & Trade Talks on "Hiatus"

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On today’s episode of Free Lunch, Ryan McQueeney discusses the upcoming Fed minutes and Wilbur Ross’ comments about U.S.-China trade talks. He also recaps earnings reports from United, Abbot Labs, and U.S. Bancorp. Later, he takes at a look at the earnings scorecard for bank stocks and explains why investors are worried about revenue growth.

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Free Lunch is presented by Zacks Investment Research. It is streamed live, four times per week, and features breaking news and analysis from Zacks strategists. Free Lunch is available on YouTube, Facebook Live, Twitter, Ustream, and more.

U.S. stocks were down in morning trading Wednesday as investors cautiously waited for the latest Fed meeting minutes to be released later in the day. Wall Street has already baked in another rate hike in December, but today’s Fed minutes could reveal how far ahead the central bank is looking for additional hikes, and that is what investors will be looking for in the notes.

Elsewhere, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on CNBC this morning said trade talks between the U.S. and China were “on hiatus.” This is not necessarily a surprise to those who have been following the negotiations closely, but Ross’ confirmation that no progress has been made recently is certainly not great news.

These headwinds helped outweigh decent earnings results from the likes of United (UAL - Free Report) , Abbot Labs (ABT - Free Report) , and U.S Bancorp (USB - Free Report) early this morning, although major indexes did muster a rally into the lunch hour.

United actually missed earnings estimates, but strong revenue and guidance helped move the airline stock higher. Abbot Labs recorded revenue growth of 12% from the prior year and beat expectations on the top and bottom lines. U.S. Bancorp, one of the last major banks to report, also topped estimates for both earnings and revenue.

Ryan covers each of these major headlines and earnings reports on the first half of today’s show. Later, he uses USB’s earnings report to pivot to a conversation on the Q3 results of the bank industry now that most major companies have filed.

Bank stocks have had a rough year, and although this earnings season once again proved that the business is going its profits, investors are more concerned with stagnating revenue growth and less-frequent top-line outperformance.

With this in mind, Ryan explores the earnings scoreboard for major banks and highlights a few key charts that investors should check out now!

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