Next Week At A Glance

This story features ALS LIMITED, and other companies. For more info SHARE ANALYSIS: ALQ

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

Wall Street will return from the Thanksgiving holiday tonight for a half-day, half-hearted session. Few will actually return.

Most will return on Monday for a week packed with US economic releases, including house prices, pending home sales, chain store sales, vehicle sales, consumer confidence, personal income & spending, construction spending, the Chicago PMI, manufacturing PMI and the Fed Beige Book.

Does data matter at all to the Fed anymore, vis a vis the assumed December rate hike?

Next week also sees the once important jobs numbers, and a revision of the first estimate of September quarter GDP.

The big event next week will nevertheless be the OPEC meeting in Vienna on Wednesday. Oil prices appear now to have entered a calm before the production freeze yes/no storm. The current WTI price around US$48/bbl is pricing in optimism, therefore suggesting upside to not much more than 50. Downside will be more pronounced if no agreement is reached.

Thursday is the first of the month which means manufacturing PMIs from across the globe, and also the services PMI from China.

Aside from the PMI, Australia will see building approvals, private sector credit and retail sales, along with the September quarter private sector capex numbers.

There’s a mad rush next week for most Australian companies to get their AGMs over and done with before December, although a few stragglers wait until later. There’s also a raft of off-cycle earnings reports due next week, including those of ALS ((ALQ)), Aristocrat Leisure ((ALL)), SAI Global ((SAI)) and SMS Management & Technology ((SMX)).
 

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