Earnings Indicators
These are numbers that move the profits of large companies. Most change every day or week; the four marked monthly come out once a month. Each card shows the latest figure, how the last four weeks (for monthly figures, the last three months) compare with the same period a year earlier, and a line for the past year. For prices and rates the line shows the level, and the dashed line marks the level a year earlier. For quantities such as loans, exports, sales and travelers, the line shows the change from a year earlier, worked out the same way as the label, and the dashed line marks zero. The thin vertical lines mark the start of each quarter (January, April, July and October).
Every label follows the same rule. Rising or Falling compares the last four weeks with a year earlier. Faster or slower says whether that gap is wider or narrower than it was four weeks before. Little changed means within 2% (0.1 point for interest rates and the financial conditions index, 1 point for refinery utilization). A rise is not good or bad in itself: a higher oil price helps oil producers and hurts airlines.
Last updated: November 2, 2026.
Profit tailwinds this week
Each dial adds up the labels of the cards beneath it. Gold names push toward a tailwind, blue names toward a headwind, gray names are little changed. A rising cost, such as jet fuel for airlines, counts against. These dials describe the conditions for profits, not share prices.
On this page: Profit tailwinds · Energy · Chips · Travel · Shoppers and jobs · Banks, rates and the dollar · Food costs · Also worth watching
Energy
Moves: A higher price raises what oil producers such as ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips earn on each barrel. It raises fuel costs for airlines and chemical makers.
Moves: The benchmark for most oil sold outside the US. A higher price raises what Shell, BP, TotalEnergies and Saudi Aramco earn on each barrel, and the price of LNG sold under oil-linked contracts.
Moves: What a refiner gets for turning three barrels of crude into two barrels of gasoline and one of diesel, before its own operating costs. It is the main driver of profit for refiners such as Marathon Petroleum, Valero and Phillips 66.
Moves: The share of US refining capacity in use. When refineries run close to full, refiners such as Marathon Petroleum, Valero and Phillips 66 spread their fixed costs over more barrels.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Weekly Petroleum Status Report
Moves: Stocks running below normal tend to push the crude price up, which helps oil producers and raises costs for refiners and airlines. Stocks building up point the other way.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Weekly Petroleum Status Report
Moves: Fuel is one of the largest costs for airlines such as Delta, United, American and Southwest. A higher price lowers their profit unless fares rise with it.
Moves: What drivers pay at the pump. A higher price leaves households less to spend elsewhere, which matters for retailers such as Walmart and Target. Costco and Walmart also sell fuel.
Moves: Diesel fuels trucks, trains and delivery vans. A higher price raises shipping costs for UPS, FedEx, railroads and retailers that deliver, such as Amazon, unless fuel surcharges pass it on.
Moves: A higher price raises revenue for gas producers such as EQT and Expand Energy. It raises fuel costs for gas-fired power plants and for chemical and fertilizer makers.
Moves: Less gas in storage than usual before winter tends to lift the gas price, which helps producers such as EQT and Expand Energy and raises fuel costs for gas-fired power plants. Analysts also compare it with the five-year average.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Weekly Natural Gas Storage Report
Moves: More rigs mean more work for oilfield service companies such as SLB, Halliburton and Baker Hughes. It also hints at how much oil and gas the US will pump months from now.
Source: Baker Hughes Rig Count
Moves: More demand lifts sales for power producers such as Vistra, Constellation and NRG, and orders for turbines and grid equipment at GE Vernova. Data centers add to it; weather swings it from week to week.
Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Hourly Electric Grid Monitor
Chips
Moves: TSMC makes chips for Nvidia, Apple, AMD and Broadcom. Its monthly sales show how much those companies are spending on chips, weeks before any of them report. See how TSMC earns.
Source: TSMC investor relations
Moves: These companies assemble the AI servers that cloud companies buy with Nvidia’s chips inside, and Hon Hai also assembles iPhones. Their combined sales show how many servers are shipping, weeks before Nvidia, Apple or the cloud companies report.
Moves: Memory chips make up most of Korea’s chip exports, so this shows price times volume for Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, and the direction of the memory cycle that also drives Micron. The customs service also publishes early figures for the first 10 and 20 days of each month.
Travel
Moves: More travelers fill planes for Delta, United and American, and bring more guests to hotels such as Marriott and Hilton and to Disney’s US parks.
Shoppers and jobs
Moves: More people losing jobs means less spending in stores and on cards, which matters for retailers and for Visa and Mastercard. It also means more unpaid loans for lenders such as JPMorgan Chase and Capital One.
Moves: People still receiving unemployment benefits. A rising number means people are taking longer to find work, which shows up later as unpaid card and auto loans at lenders such as Capital One and Synchrony.
Moves: More postings mean more hiring ahead, which supports spending at retailers and card payments at Visa and Mastercard. Staffing firms such as Robert Half earn more when postings rise, and so does Recruit Holdings, which owns Indeed.
Source: Indeed Hiring Lab, via FRED
Banks, rates and the dollar
Moves: The short-term rate that most floating-rate loans now follow. A higher rate raises what banks earn on floating-rate loans and what brokers such as Charles Schwab earn on clients’ cash, and raises what banks pay depositors.
Moves: Circle earns interest on the reserves behind every USDC, so its revenue moves with this amount times short-term interest rates such as SOFR. Circle pays a large share of that income to Coinbase and other partners that hand out USDC.
Source: Circle, monthly USDC reserve reports examined by an independent accountant
Moves: A higher yield lets banks and insurers earn more on new bonds they buy. It raises borrowing costs for companies that borrow heavily to build, such as utilities and property owners.
Source: Federal Reserve (H.15), via FRED
Moves: Banks pay short-term rates on deposits and earn longer-term rates on loans. A wider gap usually widens their lending margin, for banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.
Source: Computed by Earnings Driver from Federal Reserve (H.15) 10-year and 2-year yields, via FRED
Moves: More loans mean more interest income for banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. Loan growth that slows while deposits cost more squeezes their margin.
Source: Federal Reserve (H.8), via FRED
Moves: A higher rate means fewer home purchases and refinancings: fewer loans for mortgage lenders such as Rocket, fewer homes sold by builders such as D.R. Horton and Lennar, and less spending at Home Depot and Lowe’s.
Moves: When the dollar rises, sales made in other currencies are worth fewer dollars. That lowers reported revenue and profit for companies that sell abroad, such as Apple, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Procter & Gamble.
Source: Federal Reserve (H.10), via FRED
Moves: Below zero means borrowing is easier than average. When it rises, credit gets harder to get: banks lend less, and deals and share sales slow, which cuts fees at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
Food costs
Moves: Beef is one of the biggest food costs for burger restaurants such as Wendy’s, and for McDonald’s and its franchisees. A higher price squeezes restaurant margins unless menu prices rise. For beef packers such as Tyson, profit depends on this price against what they pay for cattle.
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service (LM_XB403)
Moves: What beef packers such as Tyson pay for cattle. Set against the wholesale beef price, it shows how much the packers keep on each animal.
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service (LM_CT150)
Moves: What pork packers such as Tyson, Smithfield and Hormel get for the meat. Their margin is this price against what they pay for hogs.
Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service (LM_PK602)
Moves: Cal-Maine Foods, the largest US egg producer, sells many of its eggs at prices tied to the wholesale market, so its profit rises and falls with this price. Bakers and breakfast chains pay more when it rises.
Source: USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, Daily National Shell Egg Index
Also worth watching
These move profits too, but their data belongs to private publishers, so this page does not track them: memory chip prices (TrendForce), container shipping rates (Drewry World Container Index), US hotel revenue per available room (CoStar) and weekend box office receipts.
Data come from US government agencies, the Chicago Fed, the Korea Customs Service, the Taiwan Stock Exchange’s filing system, TSMC’s own reports, Baker Hughes and Indeed Hiring Lab. Figures marked “computed” are calculated by Earnings Driver from the source data. Educational only, not investment advice.