Weekly Reports | Feb 11 2011
By Greg Peel
It's that time of the year again. In the next two weeks Australia will be bombarded with corporate earnings reports – most of them half-year but many full-year – as the local result season shifts into top gear. And then by the first of March it will all be over.
With too many stocks to highlight, readers are directed to the FNArena calendar.
There will also be an avalanche of fresh economic data in the US with inflation in the frame. As the rest of the world battles to deal with rising cost pressures, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke is confident US inflation will remain at low levels for quite a while yet and as such there is no intention to alter the QE2 program. The US monthly PPI will be released on Wednesday and CPI on Thursday.
Across the week we will also learn the latest Empire State and Philadelphia Fed manufacturing indices, the housing market sentiment index, retail sales, housing starts, industrial production and leading economic indicators. The minutes of the last Fed monetary policy meeting will be released on Wednesday.
On Monday Japan will release its fourth quarter GDP result and on Tuesday the eurozone will do likewise.
Amidst the profit reports, Australia will see housing finance, net lending, the NAB business survey, the Westpac leading economic index and vehicle sales next week. The RBA will release the minutes of its last monetary policy meeting on Tuesday.
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.
