TECHNOLOGY

Cloud services to play big role in Amazon and Microsoft earnings.

Analysts expect Microsoft’s earnings on Wednesday to show the company’s resurgent growth, driven by a push into cloud computing, with revenue up about 13.5 percent over the previous year. Microsoft investors care most about its Azure cloud computing business, which last quarter grew 85 percent over the previous year and has become the leading competitor to Amazon’s web services.

The booming cloud market is one of the big, high-margin businesses investors expect to see grow in Amazon’s earnings report on Thursday. Increasingly, Amazon’s cloud, advertising and subscription offerings have become big and profitable enough to offset Amazon’s investments in its resource-intensive retail business. Analysts expect the company’s quarterly profit will be about $1.5 billion, almost five times what it earned in last year’s third quarter.

— Karen Weise

ECONOMY

European Central Bank meets, as economy faces pressures.

The European Central Bank will meet to discuss monetary policy on Thursday, in a markedly less certain economic environment than was the case a few weeks ago. Italy is defying eurozone spending rules; President Trump’s trade war is taking a toll on growth; and Britain seems to be stumbling toward a disorderly exit from the European Union. The situation is not so grave that the bank’s Governing Council is expected to alter its plan to slowly wind down the crisis measures it deployed during the last decade. But Mario Draghi, the central bank’s president, may give a more cautious assessment of the eurozone economy when he holds a news conference after the meeting.

— Jack Ewing