Financial Markets Summary
For The Week of October 20-24 2008
After the heaviest week of Fed
talk and macro data releases in recent memory, the calendar will see a very
light week of rhetoric and economic releases. Monday, will see the
publication of the Conference Board's index of leading economic indicators,
Thursday the weekly jobless claims data and the week will conclude with the
publication of the September existing home sales.
Fed Talk
Ahead of the FOMC meeting on
29 October, the week will see a modest quantity of Fed talk. On Monday,
Atlanta Fed President Lockhart will speak on the economic outlook and FRB
Minneapolis President Stern will speak, topic TBA.
Corporate Earnings
The week will see a heavy
slate of earnings announcements that will feature a large quantity of
releases from financial firms. Monday will see announcements from American
Express and Caterpillar. The following day will feature, United Healthcare,
US Bancorp and M&T Bancorp. After market releases on Tuesday will see
Yahoo, Black Rock, Apple and State Street. Heavyweights on Wednesday
announcing earnings will be Boeing, Wachovia, McDonalds and Merck. Thursday
will see Microsoft, Altria, UPS, Eli Lilly and Jet Blue all release earnings.
The week will conclude with AMBAC and MBIA providing information on their
bottom lines to the public.
Leading Economic Indicators
(September) Monday 10:00 PM
The index of leading economic
indicators should capture the recent turmoil in financial markets and provide
a fairly bleak reading of the prospects for the US economy. Save, the
increase in the money supply at the Fed every other leading indicator should
be emitting negative signals for the US economy. We anticipate that the
leading index will fall -0.4% for the final month of Q3'08.
Jobless Claims (Week Ending
October 18) Thursday 08:30 AM
The impact of the twin
hurricanes to hit the Gulf Coast this year on the claims series has begun to
unwind and the adjustment within the initial claims looks to be just about
finished. We expect that claims will increase to 470 for the week.
Existing Home Sales
(September) Friday 08:30 AM
The market will observe some
of the first hand data since the intensification of the credit crunch begin
just over one month ago. The existing sale of homes, which has been in the
process of stabilizing over the past few month's is poised to reap the
benefits of the strong increase in pending home sales in August. Indeed our
model confirms that data should confirm that. However, its is in our judgment
that the rapid deterioration of conditions in the credit markets effectively
shut down lending for part of the sampling period and this should adversely
impact purchasing activity in September. Thus, we anticipate that jobless
claim will decline to 4.70mln for the month of September.
