It is not in any corporate reporting calendar but Friday March 31 is the most important ‘event’ this week.
Not only is it the end of the month, it is the end of the first quarter of the year (or third quarter for companies with June 30 balance dates) – especially important in the US corporate reporting season. And it also vital for a host of economies around the world and an important cut off for vital data releases on inflation, GDP, jobs, investment, spending and budgets.
Here in Australia it’s especially important being also the date for three of the four big banks rule off their books for their 2016-17 interims – that’s Westpac, the NAB and ANZ. They report in late April, while the Commonwealth will release a third quarter trading update.
March 31 also is the end of the financial year for Macquarie Group, which also reports in around a month’s time. Other leading companies with March 31 balance dates include CSR (full year) and Orica (half year), Incitec Pivot (half year), James Hardie (3rd quarter), Resmed (third quarter), News Corp (third quarter) and ALS (full year).
As well every mining company will release quarterly activity reports over the next month, while major retailers such as Woolworths, Wesfarmers will be releasing quarterly sales performance data.
March 31 is also the end of the Japanese and UK financial years.
The last week of each quarter is nearly always quiet with the central bank meetings, start of the month data reports and other information not due out for a week or more (The Reserve Bank meetings tomorrow week, for instance).
In the US, data and reports will be released on consumer and home prices (both Tuesday night our time), pending home sales (Wednesday night), personal spending and core consumption inflation (on Friday).
The big release in the US though will be the third estimate of fourth quarter GDP is out Thursday night, our time.
It is expected to showed that growth edge up to 2%, from a two previous estimates of 1.9%.
That will be sharply slower than the 3.5% growth registered in the September quarter.
More details on Donald trump’s Mexican Wall will be released this week.
Some leading Fed figures will be out and about speaking in the US, led by Chicago Fed president Charles Evans, New York Fed president Bill Dudley and Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari.
In the Eurozone economic confidence indicators (Thursday night our time) are expected to remain solid and core inflation is likely to have remained unchanged at 0.9% year on year in March.
Preliminary inflation figures will be released for some countries and the eurozone as a whole on Friday.
And in London UK Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to formally trigger article 50 and commence two-years of negotiations on the UK’s exit from the EU. That also comes a day after the Scottish Parliament picks up a debate on whether to hold a second referendum on its independence.
These were held over from last week because of the Westminster attack. The EU is expected to make a formal reply to the UK decision later in the week.
Japanese data for February to be released on Friday is likely to show continued strength in the labour market, strong industrial production but weak household spending and core inflation remaining only just above zero. retail sales figures are out on Wednesday.
China’s manufacturing conditions index for March (Friday) is expected to have eased but should retain most of its recent gains, according to the AMP’s Chief economist, Dr Shane Oliver.
And in South Korea Samsung is expected to release its new S8 smartphone midweek. It will replace the S7 which was withdrawn last year after a spate of battery fires and other problems.
In Australia, credit growth data on Friday for February will be released and the focus will likely be on a further acceleration in lending to property investors. Data on new home sales and job vacancies will also be released.
