Weekly Reports | Apr 01 2010
By Greg Peel
This report is coming to you early this week given the Easter break, and let's get our holiday calendar straight first up:
Today is a full day's trade on the ASX before reopening again on Tuesday morning. The NYSE will put in a full day's trade tonight, will close for Good Friday and will reopen on Monday night. Thus there will be two Wall Street sessions before Australia gets to have another go.
To complicate matters, all US markets are closed on Friday except for the bond market, which will be the only market able to react to the jobs report being strangely released on the holiday (although we must appreciate that on Wall Street it's not everyone's holiday).
Furthermore, this weekend sees the end of Daylight Savings Time in relevant Australian states so as of Monday morning our time the NYSE will be closing at 6am, not 7am.
As half the market leaves early today we will be rolling around the world with manufacturing index results, culminating in the ISM number in the US which is closely watched. A weak result on both the ISM and jobs would not bode well for April's kick-off. Good numbers will.
Next week kicks off in Australia with the RBA's rate decision on Tuesday. Economists are still leaning towards a rate rise, although yesterday's retail sales and building approval numbers did dampen some enthusiasm. We also have ANZ job ads, the AiG services index, and, most importantly, the monthly unemployment figures out next week.
The US will see a handful of important releases including the ISM services index, pending home sales, consumer credit and wholesale inventories. The minutes of the last Fed monetary policy meeting are released on Tuesday, which are always open for close scrutiny.
But of most interest in the US next week will be the latest Treasury bond auctions, this time featuring the less favoured longer dates. With the US ten-year yield once again ticking up towards 4%, weak demand next week could push the yield through and frighten the stock market. The Treasury will offer ten-year inflation-adjusted notes on Monday, three-year notes on Tuesday, tens on Wednesday and 30-year bonds on Thursday.
The EU will announce its final fourth quarter GDP revision next week, and both the ECB and the Bank of England will make rate decisions (which will be unchanged, but the accompanying statements will be carefully read). The Bank of Japan also makes a rate decision but again a change is unlikely.
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.
