Next Week At A Glance

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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

Next week is the week we'll begin to talk Australian earnings season. As usual, the season will begin slowly, grow through the month and feature an absolute deluge in the last two weeks. Highlights next week include reports from Cochlear ((COH)), News Corp ((NWS)), Telstra ((TLS)) and Newcrest ((NCM)). Both Westpac ((WBC)) and National Bank ((NAB)) will provide quarterly updates while Macquarie Group ((MQG)) will provide an operational briefing ahead of its March year-end.

Next week also brings an RBA meeting on the Tuesday and the jury remains divided, although the mood has shifted towards a March or later cut. The central bank has two months of data to contemplate, including December quarter numbers, however if the stock market is truly a leading economic indicator it would be hard to come up with an easing argument at this point. Interestingly, the December quarter retail sales number – the busiest retail quarter of the year – will not be released until Wednesday.

Being the first week of the month we'll see all the global PMI data, with manufacturing numbers leading today for Australia and China and tonight in the eurozone, UK and US. China will release its services number on Sunday and everyone else on Tuesday, with Australia's construction number due later in the week.

Australia will also see the ANZ job ads series, building approvals, house prices and the trade balance, with the jobs number out on Thursday.

The US sees its all important jobs number tonight, and across the week it's PMIs, factory orders, chain store sales and trade balance.

The ECB and Bank of England will both hold policy meetings on Thursday night with some tipping a possible rate cut from the eurozone central bank, at least some time soon.

Friday will see inflation data from China along with its trade balance.

Meanwhile, Wall Street will be looking for any reason to push the S&P back through 1500 and the Dow through 14,000, while in Australia the big goal is 5000 for the ASX 200. We have currently stalled.
 

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