Economic indicators for the week of Nov. 1st

This will be a very busy week, indeed. Most likely the most important piece of news this week will not be Initial Jobless Claims, or CPI or Home Sales. One of the most important piece of news will be on Wednesday when the Fed meets and decides how much Quantitative Easing (QE2) the Fed will chose to initiate. Many expect about $200-400 Billion dollars. Many say this won't help enough, as it is too little an amount. Expect a market reaction when the Fed does announce their intentions along with their Interest rate decision. But even this is not the most important information of the week. Below is a list of Indicators being released and the day and time of the announcements.

The Unemployment rate for October will be released on Friday, as will Pending Home Sales. But the most important information released this week will be the Election results. That we will know most likely by Wednesday, not Tuesday as many races are very tight.

Market comments for Sept. 27th and the week

I had been away this weekend, hence the lack of any updates. But here in the table below are the expected Economic indicators to be released this week. As usual, Initial Jobless Claims on Thursday is very important. Expectations are for 450K Initial Claims for the week. Last week the data surprised all by coming in at 465K. If this week rises at or above 465K, we could see a sell-off.

Also important this week will be the Consumer Confidence number and the 3rd estimate of Q2 GDP. Personal Income and Personal Spending is also important. However, having said that, the markets appear not to be data driven but investor psychology driven. Notice I did not say Consumer Confidence or Univ. of Michigan Sentiment Index. The Bulls want to drive this market up because they see no problem out there that the Fed can't handle (substitute the word "handle" with the word "manipulate".

Weekly Economic indicators for the week of Sept. 20th

Here below is a table of the economic data which will be released this coming week. The most important pieces of data released this week will be from the Federal Reserve FOMC meeting on Tuesday, Initial Jobless Claims on Thursday and Durable Goods orders on Friday. I will post the actual data as it is released this week and will comment on the stock charts as the week unfolds. Here's the Table of the economic data. Also, don't forget to read my last 2 posts if you haven't yet. One shows historical data on the University of Michigan Sentiment Index over a long period of time.

To view the data more clearly in a larger format, click on it.

Market comments for Aug. 26th

Well the Initial Jobless Claims number came in at 473K this week. Expectations were for 475K, so they came in as expected. As El-Erian, Co CEO of Pimco said this morning on CNBC, "The number is as was expected but it isn't a good number." The prior week was revised up from 500K to 504K. Continuing Claims came in at 4.456 Million vs an expectation of 4.500 Million. The prior week was revised up from 4.478 Million to 4.518 Million. But look at this Bloomberg.com headline on the results: "Jobless Claims in U.S. Decline More Than Economists Estimated to 473,000." Gee that's only 2K shy of what they expected and well within rounding error given they revised the previous week up 4K. So as far as I am concerned it came in as expected. But this title is meant to make people feel things are getting better. Unbelievable!

Tomorrow at 5:30am PST, the Q2 initial GDP estimate will be reported. Expectations are for 1.3%. Prior Quarter was 2.4%, so we will see what they think as to how much the 2nd quarter started to slow down. This is an easy number to manipulate because all it is a a bunch of guesses and extrapolations. We won't know for a few months what it really came in as. Also tomorrow in Univ. of Michigan Consumer Sentiment, which will be released at 6:55am PST or 9:55am EST.

Dow Futures are up 38 points in pre-market so the reaction looks muted to the Jobless Claims and actually may give some relief to the market today. European markets are up almost 1% today. And the Nikkei was up about 60 points in overnight trading but it did not climb back up over 9,000. It closed at 8,906. Gold is down only $1.00 this morning. I would expect it to drop a little more with the market ready to rise some.

There are only 4 trading days left in August.

Economic data for the week ahead

This is an important week on many fronts to be paying attention to the data to be released on the economy. Most likely Tuesday's information will be the most important, as a plethora of data will be released in the morning and before the stock market opens. Also to contend with is Options Expiration for August on Friday. Here's the line up and expectations for the data this week.

Monday, Aug. 16th NY Fed, Empire Mfg. Index for August. Market Expects 7.0, Prior Month was 5.1
Tuesday, Aug. 17th Housing Starts for July. Market expects 555K. Prior Month was 549.
Tuesday, Aug. 17th Building Permits for July. Market expects 573. Prior Month was 586.
Tuesday, Aug. 17th PPI for July. Market expects +0.2%. Prior Month was -0.5%
Tuesday, Aug. 17th Core PPI for July. Market expects +0.1%. Prior Month was +0.1%.
Tuesday, Aug, 17th Industrial Production for July. Market expects 0.8%. Prior Month was 0.1%
Tuesday, Aug. 17th Capacity Utilization for July. Market expects 74.8%. Prior Month was 74.1%
Thursday, Aug. 18th Initial Jobless Claims. Market expects 470K. Prior week was 484K.
Thursday, Aug. 19th Continuing Claims. Market expects 4.500 Million. Prior week was 4.452 Million.
Thursday, Aug. 19th Leading Indicators for July. Market expects +0.2%. Prior reading was -0.2%

Friday is Options expiration for August and I do expect increased volatility and an significant increase in Volume on Friday.

Economic Indicators for the week of July 19th

First a comment about yesterday's market action. The most important data from yesterday's market drop in all Indexes was that the Volume was the highest since June 25th and the drop was the largest since June 29th. And yesterday, the Candlestick pattern for the Dow and many other indexes, was the Black Opening Marubozu pattern. This pattern shows that the market dropped from the opening to most of the day, but did not close at the lows, leaving a small shadow. I suspect more down days will follow yesterday's close.

Here is the economic data to be released this coming week:

Monday, July 19th 10:00am EST:
-National Home Builders Index for July. Prior month data was 17 for June.

Tuesday, July 20th 8:30am EST:
-Building Permits for June. Prior month of May data was 574K permits. Expectations are for watered down 560K permits.
-Housing Starts for June. Prior month of May data was 593K starts. Expectations are that the number will drop to 570K starts.

Wednesday, July 21st 10:30am EST:
-Crude Inventories for week. Prior readings were for 5.06 Million barrels.

Thursday, July 22nd 8:30am
-Initial Jobless Claims for week. Prior readings were 429K and expectations are that number will increase to 440K. (Comment: A larger number will cause a significant market negative reaction. It is the 2nd most important number of the week.)
-Continuing Claims. Prior reading was 4.681 Million people. Expectations are for 4.600 Million. (Comment: If this number also increases significantly the market will most likely have a significant negative reaction. It is the 3rd most important number of the week.

Thursday, July 22nd 10:00am
-Existing Home Sales for June. Prior month of May data was 5.66 Million homes sold. Expectations are for 5.40 Million homes. (Any number below 5.0 will cause alarm to the market.) It is the #1 most important data released for the week.
-Leading Indicators. Expectations are for a -0.4% number. (When Leading Indicators are negative, that is not showing growth in our economy but rather a slowing of the economy.

Just from the expectations by economists with all these numbers, you can see a negative tone to what will be announced this week. Normally that will contribute to the market decline. However, also in the mix are earnings announcements for the coming week.

Monday: IBM, Texas Instruments and Hasbro

Tuesday: Apple, Goldman Sachs, Bank of NY, Johnson and Johnson, PepsiCo, United Airlines, United Health, Yahoo

Wednesday: Abbott Labs, American Airlines, Coca-Cola, EBay, Morgan Stanley, EMC, Starbucks, US Bancorp, United Technologies, US Airways, Netflix, Wells Fargo

Thursday: 3m, Amazon, American Express, AT&T, Capital One, Continental Airlines, E-Trade, Eli Lilly, Hershey, JetBlue, Microsoft, Philip Morris, Travelers Insurance, Union Pacific, Xerox

Friday: Ford, Honeywell, Kimberly-Clark, McDonalds, Schlumberger, Verizon

These are but a few earnings to be released this week but as you can see any can move the market and most likely will some of the time. The facts to pay particular attention to is the economic data for the week as that will set the tone whether earnings exceed, meet or fail to meet expectations. It is the water that surrounds each of these companies and the environment they find themselves in with investors. High Unemployment, low Consumer Confidence, dropping housing values and a climate of worry about Deflation now by the Fed is the reflection from this water. Pay attention to your ASSets. :)

Also on Tuesday, the Senate is to vote on ending the Republican Filibuster on the Financial reform Bill and on extending Unemployment benefits for the millions of unemployed. Politics is another of the many variables affecting our economy with this divided government. You would think that elected officials would be interested in working together. But no, they are more worried about keeping their own jobs than they are you and your interests or your job. You can pick either Party here as it makes no difference as far as I can see. Bah, humbug!

Hope to see you here throughout each day this week. I post in the morning usually and then update the post throughout the day with my comments or observations and predictions. So visiting once only and you miss much. Just look at a few previous posts to see what I mean. Have a nice day! Summer is fun.