Daily Lineup for March 5-9

Tomorrow's Monday is a very different Monday than two weeks ago. The market environment has certainly changed. Before the "Shanghai Surprise" inflation was all the market was concerned about, but now, it's hard to tell what is going to be the biggest market driver. This week we have a lot of economic data due to be released. Let's take a look....

Monday
Monday will be a light economic day with just the non-Manufacturing ISM report being released at 10:00AM ET. Similar to the manufacturing ISM report, a reading above 50 indicates expansion and a reading below 50 indicated contraction. Last month a reading of 59 was reported. February's consensus is currently at 57.5. However, with markets being closed for the weekend and a recent turbulent world-wide market will ensure that money will probably be both volatile and unpredictable. Currently as I type, the Nikkei is down about 2% with Australia and New Zealand down about 1%.

Tuesday
Tuesday brings non-farm Productivity at 8:30AM ET and Factory Orders at 10:00AM ET. Non-farm Productivity is expected to be reported at 1.7% after a previous number of 3%. Factory Orders are expected to drop to -4% from 2.4% previously. While on their own, none of these numbers usually create much excitement in the market, however, combined with other factors, it should provide another layer of information that can be use to forecast the market's health.

Wednesday
Next, Crude Inventories from the previous week will be reported at 10:30AM ET. Then the Fed's Beige Book will be released at 2:00PM ET. Finally, Consumer Credit will be released at 3:00PM ET. Bottom line with this is that $6B in December and consensus says $7B in January. This report really has little effect since it usually doesn't report anything the market doesn't already know and tends to have dramatic swings.

Thursday
All Thursday has to offer, as far as economic news goes, are Initial Claims (8:30AM ET) for the prior week. According to concensus estimates, Initial Claims should be slightly lowered (335K) than the previous week (338K), however, over the past few weeks claims have been rising. This could be signs that the labor marketing is loosening. Part of this could be due to construction layoffs due to the colder weather. It will be interesting to see what last weeks number is at and how the market reacts.


This should hold you over for now. Check back again for Friday's economic releases.