It’s a three-day week in Australia this week, with a fair bit packed into that time.
America and the rest of the major markets have already traded for one or two days, so the schedule of events likely to influence activity and sentiment is concentrated in the coming three days.
As we have seen above, the Fed and Japan see some major releases starting tomorrow from the Fed, the Bank of Japan, the US government and its GDP estimates and Japan’s official figures on industrial production, inflation and employment for March.
In Australia the March quarter Consumer Price data is due later this morning and as pointed out above, won’t have any real impact on Reserve Bank thinking at next week’s meeting.
As well, house price data for March and the March quarter is due for release on Friday and is likely to show flat house prices.
Also on Friday the Reserve Bank’s private credit growth figures for March are likely to show sluggish lending for housing but another month of improving demand from business.
In the corporate area, Macquarie Group will release full year profit results on Friday and they are not likely to cheer investors looking for a recovery in earnings and revenues at the country’s premier investment bank.
Resmed is also due to report on Thursday or Friday.
Meetings will come from companies like NextDC, Gold Road Resources, United Uranium, Mundo Minerals, Longreach Group, Rams Home Loans (where a group of shareholders moves to remove two directors from the company’s board), Interra Resources and Mozambi Coal, Sherwin Iron, Integrated Resources Group and Greenbox Group.
And new listings include Rift Valley Resources Ltd, Red October Resources Ltd and Musgrave Minerals Ltd.
There are also quarterly production reports due from the likes of Roc Oil, Origin Energy and Beach Energy.
But the big meeting of the week is on Friday when shareholders in Fosters Group meet in Melbourne to vote on splitting the company into a wine and a beer business.
The deal is expected to be cleared, but not before some criticism about what many shareholders think are the high costs of the divorce.
In the US, March quarter earnings reporting season will remain a key focus with another 180 Standard & Poor’s 500 companies due to report.
Thomson Reuters says that of the companies that have reported to date, 75% have beaten analysts’ expectations.
That is just above the average over the last four quarters but above the average of 62% since 1994, according to Thomson Reuters.
Results from the big oil giants are the highlight of the week, with Exxon Mobil Corp, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Chevron Corp to report, as well as Microsoft, LG Electronics, Barrick Gold Corp, ConocoPhillips, Dun & Bradstreet Corp and eBay Inc, British Sky Broadcasting Group, Coca-Cola Enterprises, Pepsi Co, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Boerse and Potash Corp Of Saskatchewan.
In Asia companies such as Samsung in South Korea and Honda and Mazda in Japan, are due to report tomorrow.
In the UK, first quarter gross domestic product data is due as is consumer confidence data for April.
European Monetary Union M3 money supply data for March is due as is unemployment data for the same month.
