Next Week At A Glance

This story features WESTPAC BANKING CORPORATION, and other companies. 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

Tonight will see the release of the first estimate of eurozone March quarter GDP. The US will see personal income & spending data, including the Fed’s preferred PCE measure of inflation.

Last night’s weak US GDP number would suggest a June rate hike from the Fed is now less likely, although the decision by the Bank of Japan not to cut further has some suggesting the Fed’s door is now open in June.

On Sunday, Beijing will release China’s April manufacturing and services PMIs.

Australia, Japan, the eurozone and US will all release manufacturing PMIs on Monday. China and the UK will be closed for May Day on Monday, so the UK and Caixin China manufacturing PMIs are due on Tuesday. Services PMIs are due on Wednesday with the UK and Caixin again a day later.

Other data releases for the US next week include construction spending, vehicle and chain store sales, factory orders, trade and productivity. Wednesday sees the ADP private sector jobs report for April and Friday brings the all-important non-farm payrolls numbers.

Tickets are now hard to come by for the RBA’s monetary policy announcement on Tuesday. Some economists had already forecast a May rate cut on the strength of the Aussie but as commodity prices continued to rally, not all economists held fast. Then came this week’s CPI disinflation shock. About half the market is now tipping a cut on Tuesday.

Aside from PMIs, Australia will also see building approvals, retail sales and trade numbers next week.

On the local stock front, it’s bank earnings season. Results are due from all of Westpac ((WBC)), ANZ Bank ((ANZ)), National Bank ((NAB)) and Macquarie Group ((MQG)).

The quarterly updates and investor days continue to flow, with Telstra ((TLS)) among the highlights next week.  Woolworths ((WOW)) will report quarterly sales. The AGM season also starts to hot up from next week.
 

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