Next Week At A Glance

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The biggest news event for Australian investors in the week ahead may wel turn out the release of economic data plus press conference on Thursday by the National Bureau of Statistics in China.

Apart from a widely anticipated return to double digit GDP growth for the country in the fourth quarter of last year, the press conference will provide investors and market watchers worldwide with detailed insights into what the Chinese government has penciled in for the new calendar year.

Are scheduled for release on Thursday, in addition to Q4 GDP: (all for December) producer prices, consumer prices, retail sales, industrial production and fixed assets investments in urban regions. Should make for a bumper day.

The second most important event next week is likely to be the fact that US markets will enjoy a long weekend with Monday providing an extra day-off to celebrate Martin Luther King, otherwise known as MLK. Already, shares in Australia are pulling back on Friday and if US investors equally decide to take profits later today, we may well have to wait until Wednesday to see some serious moves in the local share market.

Economic calendars are pretty thin for both Australia and the US next week. Monday should see the release of the monthly inflation gauge by TD Securities and the Melbourne Institute. Tuesday’s calendar sees the release of imports data, while Westpac and the Melbourne Institute are scheduled to release their consumer sentiment survey results on Wednesday. On Thursday, the Bureau of Statistics will issue seasonally adjusted estimates of motor vehicle sales.

As such, next week’s data should give us (and the RBA) some more insights into inflation and consumer sentiment.

Post MLK-celebrations, the US calendar sees the release of November capital inflows data on Tuesday with producer prices and housing starts on Wednesday. Rounding out the week are the leading index and the Philadelphia Fed index on Thursday.

Overall, inflationary pressure should have remained low, but market expectations are for a pretty buoyant read by the leading index. After all, the US economy is recovering firmly, isn’t it?

Alcoa disappointed, Intel surprised. Tonight will see JP Morgan Chase deliver the next key quarterly profit release for the new results season in the US. Next week we will see more of the same with Citigroup scheduled to release its results before the start of trade on Tuesday. IBM should do the same after the closing bell on the same day.

On Wednesday, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, State Street, US Bancorp and Wells Fargo each report before the bell with eBay issuing results after trade closes. On Thursday, Goldman Sachs reports before the start of sharemarket trade to be followed after the market close by American Express, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Google. And on Friday both General Electric and McDonalds report earnings before trade gets underway.

In Australia, all eyes will be on what BHP Billiton ((BHP)) will reveal in terms of quarterly production on Wednesday, while Iluka ((ILU)), OZ Minerals ((OZL)), Santos ((STO)), Lihir ((LHG)) and Woodside ((WPL)) will each report their own quarterly numbers throughout the week.

The Japanese calendar equally offers little excitement in advance, with consumer confidence to be updated on Tuesday and with final readings of industrial production (Mon), capacity utilisation (Mon), machine tool orders (Wed) and the leading index (Thu) expected to differ little from earlier preliminary releases.

The only exception next week seems to be the UK where the economic calendar carries relatively more weight. The UK economic calendar starts on Tuesday with the release of December inflation numbers, followed by the UK labour report for December. The UK budget deficit is expected to have widened in December as the local recession continues to undermine tax revenues and increase spending. Wednesday sees the release of Bank of England minutes for the January meeting. UK retail sales are scheduled for Friday.

The euro area will provide us with the ZEW investor confidence on Tuesday and PMI data for January on Friday.

For a more comprehensive preview of next week’s events, please refer to “The Week Ahead”, published each Monday morning. For all economic data release dates, AGM dates and times and other relevant information, please refer to the FNArena Calendar.

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