Weekly Reports | Sep 02 2011
By Greg Peel
Tonight is the US jobs report for August and economists have been back-pedalling on their forecasts since the weaker ADP number earlier in the week, with Goldman Sachs, for one, halving its expectations to 25,000 jobs added. A number that weak is a poor result, so one presumes Wall Street would respond positively given it would imply QE3 moves closer to reality.
Next Thursday night President Obama will unveil his new policies intended to spark up the US economy, and jobs creation is expected to play a large part. Wall Street will wait with baited breath.
It's Labor Day weekend in the US meaning all US markets are closed on Monday and then life returns to normal next week following the end of the summer break. September is nevertheless threatening to be a bit of a limbo month, all things being equal, ahead of the Fed meeting on September 20-21.
Economic releases in the US next week include the services PMI, the Fed Beige Book, the monthly trade balance and wholesale trade.
It's a busy week economically in Australia, with the highlight being the release of the June quarter GDP on Wednesday. Economists are expecting a return to modest growth following the weather impacted contraction in the March quarter. Before the release we'll see June quarter company profits and current account, as well as ANZ job ads, the TD Securities monthly inflation gauge, the services and construction PMIs and housing finance. Amidst these numbers, the RBA will make a rate decision on Tuesday.
While the RBA will no doubt already know the GDP result it will remain on hold either way given there has been a stabilisation in global markets since last the central bank noted the potential impact of downside macro risks. Even then the implication seemed only to be that such risks would delay a rate rise, not that they would suggest a rate cut.
When all that's said and done the trade balance and unemployment data will be released on the Thursday.
Monday is services PMI day across the globe for everyone bar the US, which is on holiday. The eurozone will make its first revision of June quarter GDP on Tuesday and the ECB and BoE will both make rate decisions on Thursday, with no changes expected.
On Friday, China will provide its monthly “data dump”.
Note that while the result season in Australia has been winding down this week, the number of stocks going ex-dividend has been winding up. Today and Monday are two big days for ex-divs which will provide an apparent drag on the stock price indices.
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.
