Sunday, August 26, 2007

The Week Ahead

Please see the post below for any comments about the upcoming week's markets.

Next week is dominated by important macro-level economic releases. These releases will pit the "please cut now" Fed watchers with the "don't cut now" Fed watchers.

We have existing home sales on Monday. This is important in light of last week's announcement of an increase in new home sales (which I am officially very skeptical of). Housing has been the primary cause of the recent credit mess, so this number is important.

Thursday we have preliminary GDP. The advance estimate was 3.4%. Any big revision will be news. Read this report through the prism of "will the Fed cut the Fed funds rate?" The number will have to drop a lot for the "please cut now" crowd to argue for a decrease due to slowing growth.

The biggest report is Friday's personal income release, which also has personal consumption expenditures. We've had 5 months of weak inflation adjusted numbers. If this increases to six things could get interesting.