THIS WEEK: The March consumer spending report arrives Monday, plus NAR's March pending home sales figures and earnings from Hartford Financial, Newmont Mining and Buffalo Wild Wings. Tuesday offers the Conference Board's April consumer confidence poll, February's S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index and Q1 results from Pfizer, Aetna, UBS, Deutsche Bank, BP, NYSE Euronext, Sirius XM, US Steel and DreamWorks. Wednesday brings ADP's April employment report, ISM's April manufacturing index, a policy statement from the Federal Reserve, and earnings from Facebook, Visa, Allstate, Comcast, MasterCard, Merck, Time Warner, CVS, Chesapeake Energy, Clorox, Humana, CBS, Marriott, MetLife and Yelp. Earnings from Kellogg, GM, Royal Dutch Shell, Beazer Homes, AIG and Kraft Foods come out Thursday, plus April's Challenger job cut report. On Friday, the Labor Department's April employment report arrives along with ISM's April service sector index and quarterly results from Berkshire Hathaway.
THIS WEEK: Monday brings earnings from Netflix, Caterpillar, Halliburton, Hasbro, Zions Bancorp, STMicro and Texas Instruments, and the NAR presents a new existing home sales report. Tuesday, the Census Bureau provides data on March new home sales, the latest FHFA housing index appears, and Discover Financial, Panera Bread, Delta Airlines, United Tech, DuPont, Travelers, Amgen, Apple, AT&T, Broadcom, Cree and Yum! Brands announce earnings. Wednesday, the Commerce Department reports on March durable goods orders; Credit Suisse, Akamai, GlaxoSmithKline, Barclays, Boeing, Ford, Eli Lilly, P&G, Sprint Nextel, Qualcomm, Aflac, Cabot Oil & Gas and Zynga are out with earnings. Starbucks, Coinstar, ExxonMobil, 3M, ConocoPhillips, Altria, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers, UPS, Altera, Baidu and Expedia report quarterly results Thursday; new weekly jobless claims figures also appear. The BEA publishes its first estimate of Q1 GDP Friday, which is also when the final April University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey arrives; complementing those releases, DR Horton, Honda and Chevron announce earnings.
Sources: cnbc.com, bigcharts.com, treasury.gov – 4/19/133,6,7,8 Indices are unmanaged, do not incur fees or expenses, and cannot be invested into directly. These returns do not include dividends.
THIS WEEK: Monday, Citigroup presents Q1 results and a new NAHB Housing Market Index appears. The March CPI arrives Tuesday, along with numbers on March housing starts and earnings from Coca-Cola, Yahoo!, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, Northern Trust, US Bancorp, Intel and CSX. Wednesday, the Federal Reserve offers its latest Beige Book and Wall Street awaits earnings from American Express, Bank of NY Mellon, Abbott Labs, Bank of America, eBay and SanDisk. The Conference Board's March index of leading indicators comes out Thursday, G20 finance ministers meet, and Chipotle, United Health, E-Trade, Philip Morris, Morgan Stanley, PepsiCo, Verizon, Nokia, Peabody Energy, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Capital One report earnings. Friday, earnings from Schlumberger, McDonald's, GE and Honeywell round out the week.
So where is the top for this market? Ardent bulls see the S&P marching steadily toward 1,550 or even 1,600 across the balance of the year, even if the current optimism fades and something approaching a correction occurs. Bears see a bubble forming off the collective euphoria. So which side has it right? No crystal ball exists to provide us with the answer to that question, but there is an old saying to keep in mind: bull markets tend to doggedly ascend a "wall of worry." Right now, your notable or emerging worries to stocks include the lingering crisis in the eurozone, a strengthening dollar, the potential hit to the economy this spring from the sequester cuts, the only-guesstimated nuclear weapons potential of Iran and North Korea, and anxieties that the Fed and other central banks might wrap up quantitative easing campaigns too quickly. At the start of April, none of these market threats had dented investor confidence all that much. Perhaps that confidence will take the rally to new peaks this month.
Looking at the rest of April, here are the highlights of the economic news stream … ISM's March non-manufacturing index (4/3), the March employment report from the Labor Department (4/5), February wholesale inventories (4/9), the March 20 Fed minutes (4/10), the March PPI, March retail sales, February business inventories and the University of Michigan's preliminary April consumer sentiment survey (4/12), April's NAHB housing market index (4/15), the March CPI plus data on March housing starts, building permits and industrial production (4/16), a Fed Beige Book (4/17), the Conference Board's March index of Leading Economic Indicators (4/18), March existing home sales (4/22), March new home sales and February's FHFA housing price index (4/23), March durable goods orders (4/24), the initial estimate of Q1 GDP and the month's final University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey (4/26), March consumer spending and pending home sales (4/29), and finally the February Case-Shiller home price index and the Conference Board's April consumer confidence poll (4/30).
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THIS WEEK: Alcoa kicks off the Q1 earnings season after Monday's closing bell, and Ben Bernanke speaks on stress testing banks Monday night. Nothing major is scheduled for Tuesday. Wednesday, the March 20 FOMC minutes will be made public and CarMax, Constellation Brands and Bed Bath & Beyond report earnings. Thursday brings the latest initial jobless claims report from the Labor Department plus earnings from Rite Aid, JB Hunt and Pier 1 Imports. Friday, March's PPI and March retail sales data arrive, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan report earnings, the University of Michigan's preliminary April consumer sentiment survey appears, and Ben Bernanke delivers an afternoon speech at the Fed's development conference.
THIS WEEK: Monday sees the release of the Institute for Supply Management's March manufacturing PMI. Tuesday, the federal government presents data on March auto sales and February factory orders. ISM's service sector PMI arrives Wednesday, along with earnings from ConAgra and Monsanto. Thursday, the European Central Bank and Bank of England make policy announcements. The Labor Department's March employment report comes out on Friday.