Weekly Reports | Mar 09 2012
By Greg Peel
There has not actually been an official announcement as this article goes to print, but it is assumed by all and sundry that the Greek bond restructure deal has received more than the required 75% acceptance. This means no default and no claims on credit default swaps and ensures the Greek bail-out package is not compromised.
We now move attention to tonight's jobs report in the US. Wall Street is optimistic, and the last couple of trading sessions appear to have rendered Tuesday's big drop a blip driven by Greek bond nervousness and the Chinese GDP target downgrade. It seems enough people now realise Beijing's low-end targets are rarely met.
It's a busy week in the US next week, with releases including business inventories, retail sales, industrial production, the PPI, CPI, Empire State and Philly manufacturing indices. Is there enough there to give Wall Street the kick it's looking for through psychological levels? Perhaps that will come down to the Fed monetary policy statement out on Tuesday. Wall Street will be looking very closely for any signs or otherwise of QE3 in whatever form.
It's a Labour Day holiday for Victorians and Tasmanians on Monday but this has no impact on national markets. The ASX is open.
The Australian economic week nevertheless begins on Tuesday with the monthly NAB business confidence survey and January housing finance followed by the Westpac consumer confidence survey on Wednesday along with December quarter housing starts. On Thursday the RBA will release its quarterly bulletin in what is an otherwise quiet week economically.
On the local stocks front there are still a few ex-dividends to work though and would you believe a handful of laggard earnings results on Thursday, including Myer ((MYR)).
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.
