Week Ahead: Apple, Facebook, Microsoft Earns -- and IMF Outlook

The coming week sees more than one quarter of the companies in the S&P 500 reporting earnings including Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, Boeing and Caterpillar.

The week also sees the latest global economic outlook from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Thursday.

The IMF last month cut its growth forecast for the United States economy this year to 2 per cent from 2.8 per cent, and urged the US to raise its minimum wage to help lift almost 50 million Americans out of poverty.

US stock markets fell on Thursday after Israel's ground invasion of Gaza and the shooting down of a Malaysian passenger jet over Ukraine, but bounced back on Friday.

The US markets also took in their stride a warning from Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, who added her voice to the argument that some biotech and social media stocks may be overvalued.

Indeed, despite warnings of an impending correction in stocks from a number of major players in the equity markets, the major stock indexes have just kept going higher.

For the week, the Dow Jones closed up 0.73 percent, the S&P 500 rose 1.03 percent and the Nasdaq climbed 1.57 percent.

Is there anything out there to bring the optimism to an end? The week ahead provides a mountain of company news for investors to consider.

Monday brings earnings from Netflix, Halliburton and Texas Instruments.

Tuesday brings an update on June's US consumer prices, and companies reporting earnings will include Apple, Microsoft, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Verizon, Comcast, Lockheed Martin, State Street, Domino's Pizza, Harley Davidson and Publicis.

Wednesday brings another slew of quarterly results from firms including Facebook, Boeing, AT&T, PepsiCo, Qualcomm, GlaxoSmithKline, Dow Chemical, Whirlpool, Delta Airlines, TripAdvisor and Angie's List.

Thursday will see the IMF deliver its outlook for the global economy, with investors looking for any change to its April statement, when it predicted the global economy would expand 3.6 percent this year and 3.9 percent in 2015.

And Thursday also brings earnings from another huge batch of companies including Starbucks, Amazon, General Motors, Ford Motor, Caterpillar, Eli Lilly, Visa, Hershey, T. Rowe Price, Nasdaq, JetBlue, Pandora and Grubhub.