Next Week At A Glance

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Next week will be an odd one with local markets closed on Tuesday, to celebrate Australia Day, and with many expected to not show up at work on Monday either. FNArena will be on duty on Monday, but not on Tuesday.

Next week’s producer prices (Monday) and consumer prices (Wednesday) are likely to become the local highlights, even when many an economist considers another rate hike by the RBA at the February meeting pretty much a done deal.

If recent international trends are anything to go by, then Wednesday’s CPI release will print a higher than expected number and this will only further fuel RBA rate hike expectations.

It is worth noting that CPI figures in New Zealand surprised to the downside this week, but then again, NZ retail sales proved better than expected. Next week’s RBNZ meeting is widely expected to bring no change in interest rates across the Tasman Sea, similar to the Bank of Canada keeping rates on hold earlier this week (idem for Japan on Tuesday).

Next week will also see the start of the local resporting season with Energy Resources of Australia ((ERA)), Alesco ((ALS)) and GUD Holdings ((GUD)) scheduled to release full year and interim profit reports.

In addition, the likes of Oil Search ((OSH)), Woolworths ((WOW)), Newcrest ((NCM)), Paladin Energy ((PDN)) and Centennial Coal ((CEY)) will release their quarterly sales and production reports.

Internationally, investors will zoom in on the FOMC meeting in the US and the official statement to be released on Wednesday.

Recent data from the US have been mixed at best. Scheduled data releases in the US include existing homes sales on Monday, consumer confidence and house prices (two releases) on Tuesday, new home sales on Wednesday, durable goods orders on Thursday and -the one that will attract a lot of press and investor attention- the fourth quarter GDP.

Current market expectations are that the US GDP report will confirm the economic recovery continued into the end of last year. The Fed is not expected to make any changes to interest rates, but what will change in the wordings of the official statement?

Friday also sees the release of Chicago’s PMI and the Univ of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index.

Plus there’s more from the US reporting season, of course.

The UK equally releases its GDP report next week, expected to show the UK finally exited recession in the last quarter of 2009. However, any strength in the report will likely add to speculation the BoE may not expand its asset purchasing program in February.

In the euro area attention will be on the German IFO business sentiment survey for January and on January inflation numbers for the euro-zone and for Germany.

The Japanese central bank is expected to make no changes on Monday. Japanese data releases likely to feature on investors’ radar are the December trade report, scheduled for Tuesday, and industrial production which is on the calendar for Thursday.

The IMF’s new global growth forecasts are due sometime this month and next week is the last week before we enter a new month.

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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