A Brief Look At The Week Ahead

Quite a retail flavour to the upcoming week, although oil and commodity prices will doubtless be the main driver as far as the blue chips are concerned. The US Federal Reserve will decide whether to increase interest rates on Wednesday, and housing market data for America is expected tomorrow and Tuesday. It was uncertainty about the strength of the US economy that sent global markets plunging a fortnight ago, and of particular concern was the property sector after house prices suffered their biggest slowdown in three decades during Q2 so market watchers will want to see if the pace of the slowdown in US housing has abated. Kazakhmys reports its interim results on Tuesday. Analysts are expecting the group to post first-half earnings of around $1bn, just shy of the company's entire 2005 earnings of $1.1bn. Venture Production, which has operations in the North Sea and offshore in Trinidad, publishes interim results on Tuesday, while Premier Oil reports its first- half results on Thursday. Both are expected to have benefited from the surge in oil prices. Also reporting this week is financial services company Resolution, which is expected to join the FTSE100 later this month following its 3.6bn acquisition of Abbey's life insurance business. Resolution reports its half-yearly results on Wednesday. Wm Morrison's new head, Marc Bolland, is in the firing line this week and will preside over the retailer's first-half results on Thursday after just a fortnight as the company's CEO. This will be Bolland's first showing in front of the City and analysts remain cautious about the outlook for the retailer. Charles Stanley have kept to their hold stance on Morrisons ahead of the results but warned investors to "stand ready to downgrade". How the supermarketeer fared during high summer will be crucial but their projections for the year to come will be what decides the fate of the share price. Amongst others in the spotlight this week are :- Burren Energy on Monday; Bloomsbury Publishing and Trafficmaster on Tuesday; Woolworths and Arena Leisure on Wednesday and Biocompatibles and NXT on Thursday. So, a little less in the way of corporate reporting this week, with the main focus on US data. Plenty to keep us all busy and amused. Good hunting! Greystone (Greystone is Alan English, City Editor at MoneyAM.) PS - Supermum is taking a break this weekend........

Good morning traders!

In Asia today, the Hang Seng ended the morning up 158.72 points at 17,396.37.

The Tokyo market is closed for a public holiday.

New York's main oil contract, light sweet crude for October delivery, was up 12 cents at $63.45 a barrel from $63.33 in US trading Friday.

Early broker notes:

SMG DOWNGRADED TO 'REDUCE' FROM 'HOLD' BY DRESDNER KLEINWORT
BODYCOTE DOWNGRADED TO 'ADD' FROM 'BUY' BY DRESDNER KLEINWORT
ENODIS REINSTATED WITH 'NEUTRAL', 180P TARGET PRICE AT CREDIT SUISSE

Happy trading!

G.

Morning all and thanks SuperGreystone.

Midday Market Roundup

I expected a bit more action today but I guess everyone is still in holiday mode...

End-of-day Market Roundup