It is a quite possible scenario that most of investors may continue to favour these giants regardless of the financial results for the previous quarter. These assets are treated as a kind of lifeline or money savers in the vast ocean, where major average stock indexes including the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100 and the Dow Jones Industrial are submerged.

In fact, there is even more cream in this cake, as the crowd may also focus on Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and McDonald's Q1 reports in the retail consumer segment, Visa, PayPal and Mastercard figures in the financial sector, a well-known UPS delivery company, aerospace Boeing corporation, as well as ExxonMobil and Chevron leaders of oil industry. Pharmaceutical Eli Lilly, Merck and AbbVie, construction equipment supplier Caterpillar, automakers Daimler and Ford will also share their results in the end of April. Thus, it could be literally called a hot time with most of these companies in the spotlight of the investment community. However, if everyone is now agitated in cream and cherries, then it is not necessary the crowd would eat the rest of the cake with the same appetite.

Fund managers treat a wide class of stock assets without excessive enthusiasm, and there are no certain explanations why. Perhaps, everyone's nerves are too tense about the ongoing inflationary spiral against and the third month of the Ukrainian war. China is struggling with a COVID-19 outbreak, which also has a chance to lower demand and therefore to contribute to recession if the global economic cycle may turn into that utterly unpleasant stage instead of further recovery.

All those assumptions could be enough for the S&P 500 broad market futures to drop to the lowest levels since mid-March. Even big techs fell by 2-5%. This follows the logic of worse expectations despite 77.8% of the 99 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported their earnings for the first quarter in April beat expert estimates, that is above an average 66%. European stocks continued to move in the same negative direction, ignoring the victory of Emmanuel Macron in France, which may provide EU markets with a degree of stability.

It seems as if the future, which does not need to be gloomy yet like a lamb led to the slaughter, dominates the present for now. So, it will soon be clear whether the week of corporate reports will be able to arrange a cardinal change or at least a significant rethink in the market sentiment, or whether investment activity will keep its present selective mode.

Alex Boltyan, senior analyst of Esperio company