Next Week At A Glance

This story features ENERGY RESOURCES OF AUSTRALIA LIMITED, and other companies. For more info SHARE ANALYSIS: ERA

By Greg Peel

Negotiations are ongoing in Athens, but given there is now disagreement over both the interest rate involved and the ECB's participation in the haircut, one suspects the battle will rage on into next week. As to what might ultimately bring the two sides together it is difficult to foresee at this point.

The Fed has moved to build more insurance into the US financial system, which has been stated as support to a still-weak US economy, but clearly also offers an element of further protection against Europe. JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimond suggested on business television last night that US banks would suffer no losses from a Greek default, however he was not pushed to contemplate the outcome of rolling contagion into the other distressed eurozone members. Wall Street might be eyeing off a new 52-week high, but the crisis is far from over yet.

Tonight will see the release of the first estimate of US December quarter GDP. At 3%, the consensus forecast is a big improvement on the previous quarter's 1.8%. If accurate, clearly it's still not enough for the Fed to feel comfortable, hence Wednesday night's extension of the “exceptionally low rate” timetable out to 2014. Tonight also sees the fortnightly consumer sentiment measure.

Next week is a busy one for economic data across the globe. Wednesday is the first of the month so that means the regular round of manufacturing PMI data from Australia, China, the eurozone, UK and US. Friday sees the same for service sector PMIs.

The US will also see personal income and spending, the Case-Shiller house price index, consumer confidence, vehicle sales and chain store sales. On Wednesday the ADP private sector jobs data will be released followed by non-farm payrolls on the Friday.

Australia will see the monthly NAB business confidence survey, private sector credit, house price indices for both December and the December quarter, and building approvals. The last of the resource sector quarterly production results will be released, and Energy Resources of Australia ((ERA)) and News Corp ((NWS)) will both provide early earnings results ahead of the flood of corporate results which will build up over the month of February.

After a week of new year celebrations, the Chinese will be back on board. 

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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