Ahead of Wall Street - May 29, 2012

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The focus this week likely will remain on the home front as a slew of market moving economic reports come out, particularly on the last two days of this holiday-shortened week. But Europe will not be far from investors’ minds either as concerns about the Spanish government’s ability to manage the country’s banking sector remain center stage. With respect to Greece, while opinion polls appear to show some of loss of momentum in public support for the anti-austerity Syriza party, it may be premature to extrapolate those to the national vote on June 17th.

On the docket today, we have the March Case-Shiller Home Price Index and the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence survey for May coming out. There is growing evidence that housing prices are stabilizing and consumers have started feeling better about their economic prospects due to the improving jobs market. We will be getting plenty of details about the state of the labor market this week, with the all-important May non-farm payroll report coming out on Friday.

Following the disappointing jobs reports in the preceding two months, the reading this Friday will either confirm a loss of momentum in the labor market or prove those two monthly reports as merely outliers. Jobs aside, we also have a number of other market-moving releases on the docket this week, all clustered in the last two days of the week. These include the second look at the first quarter 2012 GDP, the manufacturing ISM survey, the Personal Income & Outlays report, and the Construction Spending reading.

In corporate news, Sanderson Farms (SAFM - Snapshot Report), the poultry processor, came out with better than expected quarterly results this morning. In Facebook (FB - Analyst Report) news, there are reports indicating that the company may be planning to acquire the maker of Norway-based Opera Software, a web browser.

Sheraz Mian
Director of Research