Pre-Markets Lower Ahead of Massive Polar Vortex

Friday, January 23rd, 2026

It’s been an eventful week on Wall Street, with plenty of harbingers for market moves including President Trump’s reversal on Greenland, accommodating economic prints on PCE inflation and Jobless Claims, the World Economic Forum in Davos bringing the world’s elite financiers together, and Q4 earnings season completing the first leg of reportage in good/decent condition. Small-cap stocks are leading among major indexes, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq slightly in the red.
 

Massive Winter Storm This Weekend

Spreading from New Mexico to Maine, the burgeoning winter storm about to kill our weekend is expected to affect up to 200 million Americans. Impacts to travel and power outages are to be expected, with snowfalls up to two feet in some regions and wind chills sending air temperatures down to -50 degrees Fahrenheit in others. It is already being considered the largest winter storm the country has seen in at least five years.

Natural gas prices, already climbing with colder temps in certain regions — right here in Chicago, such as — are currently trading around $4.90 per MMbtu (million British thermal units), +58% over the past week alone and already at 14-month highs. American natural gas, with the advent of fracking technology 15-20 years ago, had made prices per unit historically cheap. That appears to no longer be the case.

Lest we attribute this to mere corporate price gouging, it is illustrative to know these brutal temps often make the natural resource scarce. Sub-zero temperatures cause freezing in gas lines and within the liquid components in a typical MMbtu, to say nothing of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which the U.S. ships to Europe in droves. Also keep in mind the U.S. makes up a lot of the shortage in energy supply related to embargoes on Russian gas.
 

SLB Beats Estimates in Q4

Speaking of energy, oilfield services provider SLB Corp. SLB — formerly known as Schlumberger — has outperformed estimates in its Q4 report out this morning. Earnings of 78 cents per share amounted to a +4.8% earnings surprise (though still off 92 cents per share reported in the year-ago quarter), with $9.75 billion in revenues improving +2.2% from the Zacksd consensus. Shares are up modestly in early trading, adding to the +28.5% gains for SLB just since the beginning of the year. For more on SLB’s earnings, click here.
 

What to Expect from the Market Today and Next Week

We imagine folks will be battening down the hatches ahead of this weekend’s big storm. A final January Consumer Sentiment number hits the tape after today’s open, as do S&P flash PMI figures for Services and Manufacturing — both of which are expected to be comfortably above the 50 level, marking growth versus loss.

Next week is the latest Fed meeting on monetary policy, which is a virtual lock to remain at the current range of 3.50-3.75%, 100 basis points (bps) lower than we were back in November of 2024. Healthy economic date will do this for interest rates — aside, of course, from Fed Governor Stephen Miran, who no doubt will once again vote for a 50 bps cut. Miran is currently on loan from the White House, where he has served as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors.

We’ll also start getting caught up on other delayed economic data, including Producer Price Index (PPI) numbers due out a week from today. These will depict the wholesale inflation realities for December; the retail Consumer Price Index (CPI) report won’t be released until the following week. Q4 earnings season brings us the big guns next week, with reports from Apple AAPL, Microsoft MSFT, Alphabet GOOGL, Amazon AMZN, Meta META and Tesla TSLA.

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