Next Week At A Glance

This story features CSR LIMITED. For more info SHARE ANALYSIS: CSR

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.

By Greg Peel

Ahead of today's Chinese data dump the news to absorb is an announcement from JP Morgan that it has now marked to market its positions in synthetic credit risk securities, resulting in a loss of US$2bn. The net loss against positions will create around a US$1bn negative turnaround for the bank's profit guidance. Management has admitted this sudden realisation is an embarrassment, and JPM shares are down almost 7% in the aftermarket. Other bank shares have also taken a hit in anticipation of just what similar write-downs will follow. The impact, at the time of writing, is a 90 point drop in the Dow futures contract.

Thus all things being equal, Wall Street will open lower tonight. There is unlikely to be any “new news” out of Europe in the interim, although we may see some movement on the Beijing policy front, depending on today's data.

We will otherwise move into next week not quite sure what to expect, with the likelihood of an ultimate Greek departure creating a certain level of vu deja – that unnerving feeling that this has never happened before. Greece won't be off overnight, so we will no doubt enter another one of those tedious euro-limbo periods we've come to know and hate, with the upcoming clash between the German and new French leaders also offering up unknowns.

There will be also be a big pick-up in economic data flow next week.

The US will see inflation, retail sales and industrial production numbers along with housing sentiment and housing starts and the manufacturing indices from the New York and Philadelphia Feds. The minutes of that last Fed meeting are due on Wednesday.

The week will also throw up some important data in Europe as a sideshow the main event of politics. For the eurozone we'll see a GDP estimate, trade balance, industrial production and the ZEW business climate survey. Japan also provides a March quarter GDP estimate.

In Australia the highlight will be the release of the minutes of the RBA meeting on Tuesday, in which the board will provide more meat to the bones of the 50bps rate cut decision. During the week we'll also see lending numbers and the Westpac consumer confidence survey.

On the local stock front we'll have earnings reports from Dulux ((DLX)), Incitec-Pivot ((IPL)) and CSR ((CSR)) while Commonwealth Bank ((CBA)) will provide a quarterly update. 

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