Financial Options

With many investors and policymakers still looking to the housing market's potential effect on the overall economy, the big news this week will be the Housing Market Index from the National Association of Homebuilders, a gauge of builder confidence which has been moving slightly upward, and housing starts from the Commerce Department.

Petroleum inventories have been trending downward and OPEC just announced further production cuts to take effect in February. Though OPEC's long term market power is not what it was in the 1970s, the groups attempts to keep average prices above $30/barrel contributed to the record oil prices of the last year. Now that the group has adopted a $60 price floor target, there's an added upward bias to prices in the volatile futures markets. In this environment, the US petroleum data summary on Wednesday will bear closer watching than ever even for industries not directly tied to oil.

economic indicators,T-bills,earnings

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.