After a 3 week delay, we get a flood of data early this week. Today is relatively quiet, with existing home sales at 10:00 am. Tomorrow is the highly watched Nonfarm payrolls and unemployment data for September at 8:30 am. The backlog of the other releases will trickle out over the next two weeks, with most of the following reports later this week:
- Construction spending for August
- Factory orders for August
- Trade deficit for August
- Wholesale Inventories for August
- Retail Sales for September
- Business Inventories for August
- Housing Starts for September
- Building Permits for September
- Leading Indicators for September
In addition, the Nonfarm Payrolls report for October will be released a week late, on November 8th instead of November 1st.
Of course, the irony is that the government shutdown has rendered most of this data meaningless. The financial markets are now focused on how the economy behaves during the holiday season, looking for resilience after the obvious hit to confidence in the first half of October. So whatever reaction we see after the release of these reports can be attributed much more to trigger-happy traders than to any fundamental read-through from August and September’s data.
As a result, this earnings season likely takes on more importance for macro investors, since they have little else with which to anchor their U.S. macro views. Some highlight names for this week:
- MCD reports before the open today
- NFLX reports after the close on Monday (we will have an earnings preview today)
- FCX before the open on Tuesday
- UTX before the open on Tuesday
- BA before the open on Wednesday
- CAT before the open on Wednesday
- T after the close on Wednesday
- CELG before the open on Thursday
- F before the open on Thursday
- AMZN after the close on Thursday
Bespoke points out that the beat rates are nothing to write home about so far, but we’re still early in earnings season. The next 2 weeks will give traders a flood of data, though their reaction will likely be more telling than the data itself.