Financial Options

Trying a couple of new things this week. The biggest change is that all the indicators, earnings reports and Treasury events are laid out in a table by day. (For the CSS purists out there, this is tabular data. In a book it would be presented in a table; it's appropriate to do the same on the web.)

Second, I'm changing the way links are presented. if the indicator name is a link, it is a link to an explanation of that indicator on this site. I haven't written pages for every indicator, so not all indicators names will have a link. The basic results, where possible a single index number or percentage change, will be added as they come out and those numbers will be linked to my post on the full results. In most cases those posts will have links to PDF files with the full tabular data from the organization releasing it; in many cases that data runs to dozens of pages and is of use only to serious academic or corporate researchers.

Finally, I'll be grouping the written commentary together and referring to the calendar, rather than putting commentary with the individual releases in the calendar.

Monday will set the pace for the week as we mark the fifth anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attack on the world's financial center. After the attacks there was a small movement to make new investments in stocks and mutual funds, including many new investors who had never directly invested in stocks or mutual funds before. The movement was purely a patriotic response in the face of extreme market uncertainty. The patriotic impetus to make a new investment this September 11 is smaller, but so is the uncertainty. The market has proven itself resilient in the face of unprecedented terrorism, unprecedented natural disaster, recession and Federal Reserve tinkering. At the same time, bargains abound in this market, so this September 11 could be a good time to “buy low”.

Other big events of the week are triple witching Friday, the weekly petroleum data summary with oil trading well off record levels set earlier in the summer and the retail sales figures for August will indicate how badly high energy prices are impacting non-energy consumer sales.

Each of the upcoming financial items with the exception of Treasury auctions and announcements will be linked in this post as they become available. Housing market indicators will be featured on RealNews under the Housing Market category. Job market indicators wil be featured at Jobs Calling under the Job Market category. International indicators will be featured at Growing Global under the Economic Indicators category. General US economic indicators will be featured on this site, Financial Options, under Economic Indicators category.

The earnings releases listed are companies I've chosen because of their industries, because of market capitalization (the size of the company), because they have local plants in my area or for various other reasons of general interest. Please do not take these as a “recommendation” of any sort. That I list them here simply means that I think the results may be interesting for any number of reason - I may occasionally even choose companies where I expect negative results.

economic indicators,T-bills,earnings