Weekly Reports | Aug 12 2011
By Greg Peel
What? You honestly think I know what's going to happen next week? It's hard enough at the moment to know what's going to happen in the next hour.
What I do know is that the Australian (mostly) full-year reporting season shifts into top gear next week, and the list of reporting companies is far too extensive to outline here. What results we've had to date have, however, mostly surprised to the upside, and even those results in-line with expectations (such as the banks) have sparked surprise given the sudden downturn in sentiment.
Boding well? Next week's avalanche of reports is followed by an even bigger avalanche the following week, so we won't tally any poultry just yet.
On the economic front in Australia, next week sees vehicle sales, Westpac's leading economic index, and June quarter readings for wage costs and wholesale prices. Those latter two will no doubt be very important for the RBA, which will release the minutes of its August meeting on Tuesday.
The statement from that meeting indicated a rate hike was avoided by the barest of margins given increasing uncertainty over US and European debt. The S&P downgrade which sparked the real collapse came afterward, so these particular minutes may be a tad misleading. But you never know what contingencies the RBA may have discussed.
As for the US, well, first we have to get through retail sales tonight. This number is even more important to America than it is to Australia given the consumer drives the US economy, so in the current state of hysteria we might guess that a bad result will mean a thousand Dow points down and a good result a thousand Dow points up. Or at least somewhere in between.
Next week is a busy one for US data. Releases include the Empire State and Philly Fed manufacturing indices, the housing market index, housing starts and existing home sales, industrial production, the CPI and PPI and the Conference Board leading economic index.
Good grief.
The eurozone will release its first estimate of June quarter GDP on Tuesday night but of more importance next week will no doubt be that which isn't scheduled and doesn't appear on market calendars. Merkel and Sarkozy will meet on Tuesday night to discuss what to do about the eurozone's fate, and showing a united front, and getting the response right, will be a lot more important than any piece of economic data or corporate profit report.
We all have the weekend to go and tend to our whiplash but next week it'll be back out there with the collar on.
For a more comprehensive preview of next week's events, please refer to "The Monday Report", published each Monday morning. For all economic data release dates, ex-div dates and times and other relevant information, please refer to the FNArena Calendar.
