Next Week At A Glance

This story features JB HI-FI LIMITED, and other companies. For more info SHARE ANALYSIS: JBH

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.

By Greg Peel

If there is one thing certain in this market at present it’s that the world will continue to debate if and when the Fed will start tapering or not tapering, all the way up until when we know for sure. We’ve been doing the same thing at this time every year since 2010, counting back to QE3, Operation Twist and QE2. The difference this time, of course, is we’re talking about less stimulus, not more.

Normally the Fed chooses its Jackson Hole gathering in August to inform the market, but this year Ben Bernanke is not going. He will, nevertheless, hold a press conference following the next FOMC meeting on September 18, and we can only plead for the sake of sanity that the opportunity is used either to announce tapering or announce when tapering will begin. In the meantime, Wall Street will go up and down on the data on the one hand and unhelpful Fedspeak on the other.

It is a busy week ahead of data releases in the US. We’ll see inflation, retail sales, industrial production, productivity, housing sentiment, housing starts and the Empire State and Philly Fed manufacturing indices.

Next week also features June quarter GDP releases from both Japan and the eurozone, as well as the Japanese CPI, which is the key for Abenomics, and eurozone industrial production, which is a significant indicator of any recovery.

The highlights of Australia’s economic week will be the monthly NAB business and Westpac consumer confidence surveys, but outside of election campaigning (shoot me please) the focus will be squarely on corporate earnings, with the reporting season stepping up a gear next week.

Highlights among next week’s results include JB Hi-Fi ((JBH)), Newcrest ((NCM)), Commonwealth Bank ((CBA)), CSL ((CSL)), Leighton Holdings ((LEI)), Wesfarmers ((WES)), AMP ((AMP)), Westfield ((WDC)) and Santos ((STO)), just to name a few.

The scorecard has been reasonable so far but as Karen Carpenter once said, we’ve only just begun.
 

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