The Australian June 30 reporting season will dominate this week (see separate report), along with a couple of key bits of official data on wages growth.
Offshore its US retailing stocks leading the slowing June reporting season, while in Asia there’s another round of key releases from China for July, plus the first estimate of Japanese growth for the June quarter and a similar release from the Eurozone and EU.
The Australian data releases this week centre on the Wage Price Index for the June quarter on Wednesday and Average Weekly Earnings (for the half year to May) on Thursday.
Both will show wage pressures remain weak, as the Reserve Bank has been saying for sometime and said again in its third Statement of Monetary Policy on Friday.
As well we get the latest business confidence and conditions survey from the NAB tomorrow and also the monthly consumer sentiment survey from Westpac and the Melbourne Institute on Wednesday.
And the June quarter’s house price index from the Australian Bureau of Statistics will be released tomorrow and should show another solid quarter’s performance.
These all start fleshing out the June quarter’s performance, which will be weaker than the three months to March, which the RBA also fleshed out in Friday’s statement.
Jobs data, exports and retail sales figures have all weakened since their strong showing in the March quarter and the RBA pointed to these in their downgrade.
In the US July retail sales are out on Wednesday and should show a small rise.
Industrial production data for July will be on Friday from the Fed, with a small rise forecast.
Also out Friday are the Fed’s New York regional manufacturing index and the producer price index for July (which will show a small rise).
The June earnings season continues, and more than 90% of Standard & Poor’s 500 companies have already reported up to Friday afternoon.
Most of the companies to report are second rankers.
Among the retailers, Macy’s, Norsdstrom and Wal Mart are down to release earnings reports.
But most interest will be on struggling JC Penny and whether it’s any closer to stabilising its loss of sales and losses.
Deere and Co the big farm products group is also down to report along with tech equipment bellwether Cisco (which reports for the July quarter), while drugs giant Merck is also down to report.
In Europe, the Eurozone June quarter GDP data is out Thursday and is expected to show flat growth.
Italy has already revealed its economy contracted 0.2%.
Industrial production numbers are published for the euro area midweek.
In Britain, the second estimate of second quarter economic growth will be released late in the week.
Watch Germany to see if its growth has been hurt by the tensions in Ukraine and the various sanctions.
Also in Europe, a string of second tier companies down to report earnings updates, with ThyessenKrupp one of the better known reporters.
In Asia Japanese June quarter GDP data on Wednesday is expected to fall by 1.8%, reflecting impact of the April 1 sales tax hike.
This was expected and does not represent the start of another recession, it’s merely the impact of the pull forward of demand to before April 1.
But some of the data for the June quarter, such as retail sales and industrial production have been weaker than estimated by the Government.
As well, the Bank of Japan issues minutes from its latest meeting, while industrial production numbers and capacity utilization data are due for release.
In China, Wednesday will see retail sales, industrial production and urban investment figures released. All are expected to show modest improvement from June.
Money supply and bank lending data will be out later in the week. Bank lending could show a slowing from the high growth seen in June.
Still in Asia, Chinese computer giant Lenovo is due to report as well as Kong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific, along with the world’s biggest phone company China Mobile.
Foxconn technology, the giant Taiwan based contract technology manufacturer (its Apple’s biggest contractor) is also reporting this week and may shed light on the progress of the Apple 6 iPhone which is due out in September.
