Next Week At A Glance

This story features METCASH LIMITED. For more info SHARE ANALYSIS: MTS

 By Greg Peel

Well the ASX 200 is up 1.5% this morning and if we can hold on into the afternoon you'd have to say we're heading into next week in a slightly less panicked mood. This assumes no bombshells in the meantime of course and it would be good to see Wall Street put together two days of rally for the first time this month.

Data in the US tonight include the Chicago PMI, the final Michigan Uni consumer confidence measure for the month and personal income and spending for April. But economic data have taken a back seat of late.

It is nevertheless a busy week of economic data across the globe next week, and perhaps a bit of market stability might bring the results back into focus.

For Australia, we learn the first quarter GDP result (forecasts around 0.4%) on Wednesday which comes a day after the RBA rate decision on Tuesday. The RBA has already hinted there's no chance of a rate rise this month, or probably for a while, but with all that has transpired since the May meeting commentators are now discussing the possibility of a rate cut. Who'd of thunk it?

There won't be a rate cut.

Next week in Australia also sees first quarter company profits and current account, April private sector credit, the monthly TD Securities inflation gauge, the manufacturing index and the monthly trade balance, most front-loaded in the beginning of the week.

Tuesday is indeed global PMI day, in which most major regions report their monthly manufacturing surveys (Australia, China, eurozone, UK and US) followed by equivalent service sector surveys spread out across the week.

It's a long weekend this weekend in the US with Memorial Day closing markets on Monday.

Thereafter it's a busy week with construction spending, manufacturing, pending home sales, factory orders, first quarter productivity and the services index. It's also unemployment week, which will no doubt help to refocus Wall Street on domestic matters. That number comes out of Friday and this month the earlier private sector ADP number comes out on the Thursday instead of the usual Wednesday, no doubt due to the long weekend.

The Bank of Canada makes a rate decision on Tuesday.

On the local stock front, Metcash ((MTS)) releases its full-year result while a handful of stocks go ex-dividend.

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.

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