06:04 AM EDT, 04/28/2025 (MT Newswires) -- US equity investors will focus on big-tech earnings and trade tariffs this week as major drivers of stock market gains.

* Investors will remain focused on news about trade tariffs, especially those related to China. The White House could report progress on potential trade deals with the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, and India.

* Technology stalwarts such as Microsoft ( MSFT ) , Meta Platforms ( META ) , Amazon.com ( AMZN ) , and Apple ( AAPL ) will report quarterly results this week.

* "While tariff uncertainty has been front and center for the markets and the trade wars/negotiations is a key X variable for tech stocks moving ahead, the Street is laser focused to hear from Big Tech titans to get a better grasp on the demand and spending patterns abound from enterprises and consumers," a Wedbush Securities note said Saturday.

* Non-farm payrolls for April are due Friday. April's seasonal adjustment factor has tended to be among the highest on record in recent years, according to a note from Scotiabank. Further, weather effects will probably subside after influencing the prior month in a big way, the note said, citing the San Francisco Fed's weather-adjusted payrolls spread to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' reported payroll gain.

* The Federal Reserve's preferred inflation readings -- headline and core personal consumption expenditures, or PCE, index for March -- are due Wednesday.

* The Q1 estimate for gross domestic product also arrives on Wednesday. Scotiabank expects that the GDP shrank by around 1% quarter-over-quarter at a seasonally adjusted and annualized pace.

* "If weakness is heavily driven by import leakage effects due to front-running then that's a distorting accounting effect that will likely reverse and create a false sense of a rebound in GDP growth," the note said. "The bigger debate is how bad the US economy gets once the initial effects of trade wars subside, and on that note, we think growth in the US economy will basically grind to a halt over 2025H2."