What’s Happening Next Week?

This story features AMP LIMITED, and other companies. For more info SHARE ANALYSIS: AMP

By Chris Shaw

Following this week’s release of a weaker than expected Australian GDP result for the December quarter, there will be some more information offering an update on the state of the Australian economy next week including Job ads and business conditions and confidence measures for February on Tuesday, January housing finance and investment lending and March consumer confidence data on Wednesday and February unemployment numbers on Thursday.

New Zealand will also have some important economic indicators during the week with December quarter construction activity numbers on Monday, March quarter business opinion survey details on Tuesday, December quarter terms of trade data on Wednesday and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand announcement on interest rates on Thursday. Following that will be retail sales data for January announced on Friday.

There will also be a number of releases from Japan including the latest Eco Watchers survey results and current account and trade data for January on Monday, the latter having relevance given Danske Bank’s research showing a link between the yen and Japanese trade data covered by FNArena yesterday (see Yen Weakness To Continue, 05/03/09).

As well, there will be January leading and coincident indicator numbers on Tuesday, machine orders on Wednesday, December quarter GDP numbers on Thursday and January IP and capacity utilisation and February consumer confidence data on Friday.

From the UK the expected data releases include January IP and manufacturing production numbers on Tuesday along with retail sales data, trade balance data for the same month on Wednesday and a Bank of England quarterly inflation survey on Thursday. EU data include Sentix investor confidence data for March on Monday, January PPI numbers on Tuesday, IP numbers for the same month on Thursday and December quarter labour cost and January retail sales data on Friday.

US data include wholesale inventories for January and March economic optimistism numbers on Tuesday, retail sales for February, initial jobless claims and January business inventories on Thursday and January trade balanceand February price index numbers on Friday, the same day University of Michigan Consumer Confidence survey results for March are released.

With many stocks having gone ex-dividend this week there is less activity on the corporate end in coming days, though AMP ((AMP)) goes “ex” on Monday, CSL ((CSL)) on Tuesday, Hills Industries ((HIL)) on Wednesday and Codan ((CDA)) on Thursday.

For more information: see the FNArena calendar on the website (updated regularly) and Monday’s The Week Ahead.

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