Next Week At A Glance

This story features WESTPAC BANKING CORPORATION. For more info SHARE ANALYSIS: WBC

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

The US earnings season will roll on next week and results have been to date mixed at best compared to expectations. Tonight the US will release a first estimate of March quarter GDP which is expected to show 3.0% annual growth.

Following on From Anzac Day downunder, next week sees various holiday breaks across the globe. Japan will be closed on Monday, China is closed Monday through Wednesday, Europe is closed on Wednesday for May Day and Friday begins Easter for Orthodox Christians. Notwithstanding these disruptions, there will be plenty of economic data to absorb.

In the US we’ll see pending home sales, personal income & spending, the Case-Shiller house price index, the Chicago PMI, consumer confidence, vehicle sales, construction spending, productivity, the trade balance, factory orders and the all-important jobs numbers for April. Wednesday is the first of the new month, which also means the release of the manufacturing PMI followed by the service sector PMI on Friday.

If that’s not enough, the Fed will issue a monetary policy statement on Wednesday.

HSBC’s manufacturing PMI for China is due on Tuesday, followed by Beijing’s number on Wednesday along with equivalents for Australia and UK as well as the US. Friday is the round of service PMIs. Given the May Day break, both the eurozone’s PMIs will be released on Friday. Japan will provide somewhat of a “data dump” on Tuesday.

Australia will see private sector credit, building approvals and the March quarter PPI over the week, as well as the PMIs.

On the corporate front, next week will see another deluge of production reports from the resource sector and AGM season will roll on. ANZ Bank ((ANZ)) will report its interim earnings result on Wednesday, with Westpac ((WBC)) following suit on Friday along with Macquarie Group’s ((MQG)) full-year.

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