Monday, January 1, 2007

The Week Ahead

The market is closed tomorrow for the President Ford funeral.

Wednesday we have Redbook and UBS store sales. I am especially interested in the retail numbers to see how Christmas was. Not what people were going to spend, but what they actually spent. This will be a read of the Christmas season. We also get December car sales and the ISM manufacturing index. And finally we get construction spending. This will be a big day.

Thursday we get the ISM service report and jobless claims. Look at the claims numbers to see if there is a bump in construction related losses.

Finally we get the employment situation on Friday. Again pay attention to construction employment. Also keep an eye on professional (real estate agents) and financial services (mortgage brokers). We've had two sub-prime brokers go belly-up in the last month.



In short -- we're going to get a ton of information this week.