The Middle East, bank earnings and Netflix: what investors need to know this week

The war in Iran will remain in the center of investors' attention this week. The failure of Washington and Tehran's attempt to negotiate peace last weekend triggered a new spike in oil prices. The U.S. accused the Iranian regime of being unwilling to curb its nuclear program, while Iran demanded control of the key oil artery, the Strait of Hormuz, payment of war reparations, a cease-fire throughout the Middle East region, including Lebanon, and the unblocking of frozen overseas assets, Trading Economics reported. After peace talks between the parties in Pakistan ended in nothing, US President Donald Trump ordered the blocking of the strait, which Iran is forcing ships to pay for passing through.

Wall Street's biggest banks - JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citi, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs - will open a new season of quarterly earnings releases this week. ASML, Netflix and TSMC will also release earnings data. The macroeconomic statistics calendar in the U.S. will be relatively quiet, Yahoo Finance points out. In Europe, inflation data will be released. The tone of the week in Asia will be set by the release of a large block of macroeconomic indicators from China, writes The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Goldman Sachs and LVMH will release financial statements on Monday, April 13.

On Tuesday, April 14, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor will report the producer price index (PPI) for March. The rate of wholesale inflation in the United States was already high before the Iranian war, and soaring oil prices have only added fuel to the fire, Barron's states. "So far, this [price] shock in the energy market has had little impact on the value of non-energy sector commodities. However, the situation is likely to change soon," WSJ quotes a research note by Commerzbank economists.

China's General Administration of Customs will release foreign trade data for March. The WSJ consensus forecast suggests an 8% year-on-year increase in exports.

BlackRock, CarMax, Citigroup, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, Kering and Wells Fargo will report quarterly earnings.

On Wednesday, April 15, the U.S. Federal Reserve will publish another issue of the Beige Book, the third of eight this year. It is a summary of informalized data on the current economic situation collected by 12 regional Fed banks.

Eurostat will release data on industrial production in the eurozone for February.

Financial results will be announced by ASML Holding, Bank of America, Hermes and Morgan Stanley.

On Thursday, April 16, the final eurozone inflation data for March will be released.

The European Central Bank will publish the minutes of the March meeting on monetary policy. The document is expected to shed light on how the regulator assesses the risks to inflation and economic growth caused by the war in the Middle East, WSJ reports.

The National Bureau of Statistics of the People's Republic of China will release data on China's GDP for the first quarter: they will show how the world's largest exporting country is coping with turbulence, and will set the tone for market expectations for the whole year, writes WSJ. According to the average estimate of analysts surveyed by the publication, quarterly economic growth in China amounted to 4.9% in annualized terms (against 4.5% in the fourth and 5.4% in the first quarter of 2025).

Netflix, TSMC, Alcoa, KeyCorp and PepsiCo will report earnings.

Ericsson and State Street will report quarterly earnings on Friday, April 17.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor