Hopefully it will be a quieter week ahead of us after the dramas and moves of last week, especially from central banks in Australia, the UK and Europe.
In Australia we get jobs figures for September, in the US it’s various bits of data, along with the third quarter profit reporting season, while the China’s monthly and quarterly data releases is down to start later in the week with important inflation data out Friday.
But the focus will remain on Europe to see whether it makes any more progress in supporting its banks and dealing with the debt problems in peripheral countries.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy met overnight in Berlin to discuss the problems.
IMF head Christine Lagarde had talks on Saturday with Mr Sarkozy over the European debt issue.
According to local reports, the discussion between Lagarde and Sarkozy will also focus on the preparation of the G20 Summit next month in Cannes, which evidently has the eurozone debt problem on top agenda.
This week sees a report on Greece’s finances from the investigating auditors from the IMF, ECB and EU.
A G20 Finance Ministers meeting in Paris on Friday and Saturday will be watched for signs of progress towards the “action plan of coordinated policies” to deal with global problems that were promised at last month’s meeting to be in place for the G20 leaders summit in early November.
China dominates important economic releases offshore this week.
The week ahead sees the start of the release of key data on the Chinese economy for the month of September and September quarter.
GDP, industrial production and fixed asset investment, trade, inflation, car sales and retail sales data will all be dribbled out.
On Friday, China is due to release its consumer and producer price inflation figures for September.
Investors and analysts have been watching for signs of a “hard landing” for the Chinese economy, following recent data showing a slowing rate of manufacturing and housing activity.
Consumer inflation rate eased in August to 6.2% from 6.5% in July, and the cooling trend is expected to continue for the September numbers, with China’s State Information Centre cited in a state-media report as forecasting 5.5% CPI inflation for whole of 2011.
Producer prices rose 0.1% in August to an annual rate of 7.3%.
Still in Asia and Thursday also sees the Bank of Korea due to give its monthly interest-rate decision.
The central bank last lifted rates in June, raising them by a quarter point to 3.25%, but many economists see the central bank holding for now, even though inflation is still a concern.
As for other events in Asia, Japan is due to release its August balance-of-payments data tomorrow, and Singapore will release its latest economic growth figures on Friday.
In the US the minutes from the Fed’s last meeting will be released on Tuesday night, our time, and are likely to confirm that it stands ready to ease policy further if need be.
The NFIB small business optimism survey (Tuesday) is likely to remain weak, the August trade balance (Thursday) is likely to deteriorate slightly and consumer sentiment (Friday) is likely to remain soft.
Retail sales figures are out on Friday and analysts are divided, some seeing weak figures, while others expect stronger than forecast data.
The US September quarter earnings reporting season starts tonight with results from a couple of small companies. The first major profit report comes tomorrow night from Alcoa.
Other companies expected to post quarterly results next week include PepsiCo Inc, tech giant Google Inc, banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co and toy maker Mattel Inc.
JPMorgan’s result will be the big test for sentiment for US banks which are under rising pressure.
The AMP’s Dr Shane Oliver says consensus estimates are for profit growth of 14.2% over the year to the September quarter but with negative earnings guidance running very high recently, the odds favour results surprising on the upside, albeit outlook comments are likely to remain subdued.
Bank earnings look like being the big negative this quarter, according to US analysts.
The Australian company annual meeting season steps up this week, but the dominant event will be the September jobs and unemployment data on Thursday.
In Australia we can expect data for job ads (later today), the NAB’s monthly business conditions survey (tomorrow) and consumer confidence from Westpac and the Melbourne Institute (Wednesday).
The AMP’s Dr Oliver says we can expect all these to remain soft.
Housing finance data for August will also be released on Wednesday and is expected to be again tepid.
Dr Oliver says the employment data on Thursday is expected to show a 5,000 rise after the 10,000 fall in August but unemployment is likely to remain unchanged at 5.3% and "the slowing trend in jobs will remain evident".
Other analysts see around 10,000 new jobs created.
The ABS’ jobs report could surprise on the upside: jobless numbers have been rising in the past few months and new job creation has fallen. But the number of hours worked has continued to rise.
We could be getting to a month where the flow of data sorts out that contraction on the upside (a sudden rise in new jobs) or on the downside (a rise in jobless numbers and a fall in hours worked).
In corporate news, Bank of Queensland releases full year results on Thursday, while company AGMs
