Next Week At A Glance

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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
 

By Monday night our time the situation in Crimea will have reached a head one way or the other following the referendum to leave Ukraine and join Russia. It is hard to see the majority local Russian population voting no, and at this stage it is hard to see the Ukrainian government meekly letting go. Where’s Florence Nightingale when you need her?

Leaving aside the unknown Crimean fall-out, next week is one which will be dominated by the Fed meeting on Wednesday night and the first press conference and thus first real Q&A ordeal for new chair Janet Yellen. The press pack will no doubt be unfailing polite to Granma Yellen and will likely spend a lot of time just talking about the weather.

My tip is Yellen will say the tapering program will proceed as is if the US economic recovery appears to still be on track, but can be tinkered with if it doesn’t. You heard it here first.

It’s otherwise a busy week for important US data with releases including housing sentiment, housing starts and existing home sales, the Empire State and Philly Fed manufacturing indices, industrial production, the CPI and the Conference Board leading economic index. Friday is “quadruple witching”, referring to the expiry of stock market derivatives, and can be stand-alone volatile.

The ASX will also see a quarterly stock index option expiry on Thursday in a week otherwise dominated by the release on Tuesday of the minutes of the last RBA meeting.

China is due to release property price data on Tuesday.

New Zealand will release its December quarter GDP result next week after having become the “first developed economy to raise its central bank cash rate since the GFC”. Rubbish, the Bank of Canada did that ages ago.

On the local stock front, retailers Premier Investments ((PMV)) and Myer ((MYR)) will report interim earnings next week.

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