Welcome to See King Alpha's Wall Street breakfast, where we cover the top news for investors every morning.

Good morning. Today is Friday, October 6th, then I'm your host Julie Morgan.

Pepsi, Coke, Monster, and other beverage stocks declined at least 3% on Thursday.

But why?

Exxon is reportedly close to buying Pioneer Natural, and Amazon let go of some of its workers.

Beverage stocks traded week on Thursday with a myriad of factors believed to be impacting

sentiment.

Goldman Sachs says the biggest factor is probably the start of earnings season next week,

with Pepsico heading into the earnings conference on October 10th.

Analysts Bonnie Herzog warned that expectations have moved lower ahead of the print as investors

are nervous that PEP's volume per share could be a little weak as down trading pressures

to private labels have increased, especially in Frito-Lay.

Higher interest rates, foreign exchange pressures, and the new focus on weight loss drugs are also seen as potential negative factors in the downswing.

Thursday, PepsiCo declined 5.2 percent, while Coca-Cola was down 4.8 percent.

Curic Dr. Pepper was off 4.7%, and monster beverage was lower by 4.3%.

Running contrary to the market sentiment, the Seeking Alpha Quant rating is flashing a strong buy on PepsiCo and Coca-Cola.

By the way, if you're a serious investor, I'd like to share three reasons you should be using Seeking Alpha, in addition to the quant rating that I just mentioned a moment ago.

We're the only platform with coverage of all significant stocks and EDFs.

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ExxonMobil is nearing a deal to acquire pioneer natural resources in a deal that would value the shale driller at about $60 billion.

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