Weekly Look ahead - Slow news week

This week doesn't have much in the way of economic news or profit reports. The action this week will give a good idea of the feel of the market independent from most news items and will help us to recognize the overall tone of the market. It will be interesting to see the volume of trading as well as the trends.


Monday, August 21st

• No economic reports today
  
• Earnings reports: LOW, KNSY, BOBE, CLZR
  

Tuesday, August 22nd

• No economic reports today .
  
• Earnings reports: CHINA, TOL, PERY, HPOL, MYGN, MDT, BGP, APSG, INTU, JKHY
  

Wednesday, August 23rd

• Existing Home Sales for July reports at 10am EST. Expected result is close to June’s 6.62 million units. The market is expecting a slight decline, and will probably react badly if there is a severe drop.
  
• Weekly Crude inventories reports at 10:30am EST.
  
• Earnings reports: about 20 including PSS, EV, CHS, MIK
  

Thursday, August 24th

• Initial jobless claims for the week report at 8:30am EST. Previous numbers have been near 310,000. Any indication the market is facing a hard landing (such as dramatically higher jobless claims) will cause a nasty market drop.
  
• Durable Orders for July reports at 8:30am EST. Last months numbers were up a surprisingly high 2.9% and current expectations are very low. The Briefing forecast is for a drop of 1% (a -1% growth rate), basically a pullback from last months surprisingly high numbers. Negative numbers are likely to scare some investors, though, and high positive numbers might cause an inflation scare. Middling numbers would be best. Watch out for Thursday.
  
• New Home sales for July report at 10am EST and are expected to be down a little from last months 1.1 million units.
  
• Earnings reports: OPSW, LB, MCDTA, CMOS, AGIL, ANST
  

Friday, August 25th

• No Economic Reports
  
• Earnings reports: SKIL