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Everything hits at once
A busy week for Wall St. brings reads on inflation, housing, manufacturing, oil prices and more.
June 12, 2005: 9:08 AM EDT
By Alexandra Twin, CNN/Money staff writer
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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Wall Streeters better have gotten their beauty sleep this weekend, because they may not have much opportunity in the week ahead.

Stocks have been flat to lower over the past two weeks as investors worked to digest the previous month's rally and braced for an onslaught of news.

For a market that continues to be worried alternately about oil prices, inflation, the strength of the economy and the timeline of interest rate hikes, next week brings a little something for everyone.

May numbers start pouring in next week -- on producer prices, consumer prices, housing, retail sales and even some June reads on consumer sentiment and manufacturing.

The specific forecasts are outlined below.

What unites all these reports is what investors will be looking to see, said Timothy Ghriskey, chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management.

"We're going to be looking for whether inflation is going to be contained, or whether it's going to pick up," he added, "whether the economy has really recovered, and whether the Fed is going to raise rates two more times or more than that."

The Fed effect

Last week, in a pair of speeches, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said essentially that he doesn't see the risk for a big slowdown in the economy in the near term, despite the recent spike in oil prices and economic soft patch in the spring.

He also implied that the Fed will not only raise rates at the next monetary-policy setting meeting at the end of June, but may continue beyond that meeting.

"For the rest of the month, the focus for the stock market will be on interest rates," said Ned Riley, chief investment strategist at Riley Asset Management.

Because of this, next week's inflation numbers, the Producer Price Index and particularly, the Consumer Price Index, will be key, he added.

The release of the Fed's "beige book" next Wednesday, while dated, will be relevant. That survey of the central bank's 12 districts is used in making the decision at the end-of-June meeting.

Riley said that the May numbers could be fairly benign, as tends to be the case in the month historically, but that nervousness still surrounds them. The nervous factor also remains around oil and gasoline.

After the inflation numbers, retail sales will likely be the next most significant report on tap, Riley added.

Of oil and earnings

Oil prices will remain in focus during the week, beyond the daily fluctuations of the July crude contract. Wednesday brings the always-watched weekly crude inventory numbers, but also the latest meeting of OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

The oil cartel, meeting in Vienna, is due to discuss oil-production quotas. Specifically, investors will be looking to see if OPEC boosts the daily target from the 27.5 million barrels per day set in March.

"I think any time OPEC meets it has an impact, although OPEC doesn't have the same effect on the stock market it once did," Ghriskey said.

A smattering of earnings are also on tap, including reports from three Wall Street firms. While Lehman Brothers is expected to show year-over-year quarterly growth, rivals Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs are expected to show declines, amid weaker stock trading volume.

The brokerage earnings will be watched for what they say about other areas of the market, such as mergers and acquisitions.

"The brokerage earnings are by far the toughest to predict, because so much depends on how their internal investment performance was," Ghriskey added.

What may support the market in the short term is the fact that stocks have been trendless and weaker for the last few weeks, and could be primed to bounce off that. However, breaking out of the 2005 range remains tough.

"The next three percent move for the S&P could be up, and that would take us to important resistance levels," said Barry Hyman, equity strategist at Ehrenkrantz King Nussbaum. "The question is what is the bias beyond that, what is the next five percent for the market? That's not clear."

Key events in the week ahead

  • Best Buy (Research) reports earnings on Tuesday. The electronics retailer is expected to have earned 30 cents per share, according to a consensus of analysts surveyed by First Call, down from 34 cents a year earlier.
  • May retail sales figures are due Tuesday. Sales are expected to have fallen 0.2 percent, according to a consensus of economists surveyed by Briefing.com. Sales rose 1.4 percent in April. Sales excluding the volatile auto component likely rose 0.2 percent, analysts expect, after rising 1.1 percent in April.
  • The May Producer Price Index (PPI), due Tuesday, is expected to have fallen 0.2 percent in the month, after rising 0.6 percent in April. The so-called "core" PPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, is forecast to have risen 0.2 percent, after rising 0.3 percent in April.
  • The May Consumer Price Index (CPI), due Wednesday, is expected to have risen 0.1 percent after rising 0.5 percent in April. The "core" CPI is expected to have risen 0.2 percent in May after an unchanged reading in April.
  • A trio of brokerages report results. On Tuesday, Lehman Brothers (Research) is expected to have earned $2.20 per share, versus $2.01 a year ago; on Wednesday, Bear Stearns (Research) is expected to have earned $2.37 per share, versus $2.49 a year ago; on Thursday, Goldman Sachs (Research) is expected to have earned $2.02 per share, versus $2.31 a year ago.
  • A pair of regional manufacturing reads are due during the week. On Wednesday, the June NY Empire State Index is expected to rise to 5, above the 0 level that indicates growth, and after a read of -11 in May; the Philadelphia Fed index is expected to have risen to 10 in June from 7.3 in May.
  • Adobe Systems (Research) reports earnings Thursday. The software maker is expected to have earned 27 cents per share, up from 22 cents a year ago.
  • On Thursday, May housing starts are due, and are expected to have risen to a 2.050 million unit annual rate from a 2.038 million unit rate in April; building permits are expected to have fallen to a 2.100 million unit annual rate from a 2.148 million unit annual rate in April.
  • The first read on June consumer sentiment from the University of Michigan is due Friday. The index likely rose to 88.0, economists say, from 86.9 in May.
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