Another slow holiday week has passed, with US indices roughly flat on a short trading week. As we all know, things slow down quite a bit around the holidays, so there weren’t many noteworthy things happening last week. It appears this week will be similarly slow, with things beginning to ramp back up the following week.
As we mentioned above, the past week was rather slow, so there weren’t many economic data releases. However, it’s important to note that the housing market is continuing to trend down. Analysts expected the pending home sales index to decrease by 1.8% for the month of November. Whereas, in reality, it decreased by 4.0% – a huge miss to the downside.
This week, we’ll get a couple of important releases, starting with the FOMC minutes on Wednesday. The information in the minutes will set expectations for the next rate hike, so this release will be incredibly important. We’ll also get to see some important labor-related data, such as nonfarm payrolls, unemployment rate, and average hourly earnings, on Friday. These will also be important to pay attention to, as these metrics have been very important to the Fed over the past few months.
This week, we’ve got just a couple of notable earnings releases, which we’ve outlined below:
01/05 – Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), ConAgra Brands (CAG)
WBA and CAG will both provide us with some important information regarding the consumer and their spending habits. While these companies likely won’t move the needle for the market as a whole, it’ll be important to hear what they have to say!
Monitoring the market conditions this week.
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