FYI | May 28 2007
By Greg Peel
The Dow managed a 66 point bounce in quiet pre-holiday trading on Friday, sparking a 29 point rally in the SPI Overnight. Supporting the local market were base metal prices, which reversed a couple of days of significant weakness. Copper and zinc were up 6% and nickel 3%. No correction then? Gold held its ground and oil rose over 1%.
It’s the Memorial Day holiday in the US on Monday before it’s back to business. Tuesday brings May consumer confidence and Wednesday employment change, along with the release of the minutes of the May Fed meeting on rates. Thursday sees first quater GDP and house prices, April construction spending and the Chicago purchasing managers’ index for May.
Friday is the big day, however, as the important employment and spending numbers are released. Thus we have May non-farm payrolls and unemployment rate, personal spending and April personal income. The fun continues with April pending home sales and core PCE deflator, as well as May vehicle sales, the ISM manufacturing index and the University of Michigan confidence survey.
All that should keep them on their toes.
In Australia we will learn April retail sales on Wednesday along with first quarter construction work done. Thursday should be interesting with the release of first quarter capex, for which Commonwealth Research expects a 2% rise. However, the number will be inflated to 8%, on CR estimations, due to the inclusion for the first time of Telstra in the numbers.
Thursday also brings April credit aggregates and the trade balance, while Friday will see the May commodities and performance of manufacturing indices.
The Euro Zone CPI for May will be released on Thursday.
In local stocks the news is James Hardie (JHX) will report its FY07 result today, Perpetual (PPT) has an investor update on Tuesday (which might be well attended given the Platinum (PTM) debut) and McGuigan (MGW) will provide a 2007 wine harvest update on Thursday.