Sunday, March 19, 2006

Weekly Outlook

Click here for The Week Ahead by Reuters.

There are a few economic reports of note and some significant corporate earnings reports scheduled for release this week.

Economic reports for the week include:

Mon. - Leading Indicators
Tues. - Producer Price Index
Wed. - None of note
Thur. - Initial Jobless Claims, Existing Home Sales
Fri. - Durable Goods Orders, New Home Sales

Some of the more noteworthy companies that release quarterly earnings this week are:

Mon. - INAMED Corp.(IMDC), Oracle Corp.(ORCL), Shuffle Master(SHFL), Sonic Corp.(SONC), Williams-Sonoma(WSM)
Tues. - Biomet Inc.(BMET), Commercial Metal(CMC), Darden Restaurants(DRI), Dollar General(DG), Factset Research(FDS), GameStop Corp.(GME), McCormick(MKC), Nike(NKE), Paychex(PAYX), Telephone & Data(TDS)
Wed. - Adobe Systems(ADBE), FedEx Corp.(FDX), Herman Miller(MLHR), Interpublic Group(IPG), Jabil Circuit(JBL), KB Home(KBH), Morgan Stanley(MWD), Worthington Industries(WOR)
Thur. - 3Com Corp.(COMS), Aeropostale(ARO), Apollo Group(APOL), Carnival Corp.(CCL), ConAgra Foods(CAG), Family Dollar(FDO), General Mills(GIS), Palm Inc.(PALM), Scholastic Corp.(SCHL), Solectron(SLR)
Fri. - Bausch & Lomb(BOL)

Other events that have market-moving potential this week include:

Mon. - JPMorgan Gaming/Lodging/Restaurants Conference, Howard Weil Energy Conference, Piper Jaffray Financial Services Conference
Tue. - Piper Jaffray Financial Services Conference, Howard Weil Energy Conference, JPMorgan Gaming/Lodging/Restaurants Conference, Merrill Lynch Retailing Leaders Conference
Wed. - Citigroup Latin America Conference, JPMorgan Gaming/Lodging/Restaurants Conference, Merrill Lynch Retailing Leaders Conference, Howard Weil Energy Conference
Thur. - Citigroup Latin America Conference, Howard Weil Energy Conference
Fri. - None of note

BOTTOM LINE: I expect US stocks to finish the week modestly higher on decelerating inflation readings, short-covering, stable-to-lower long-term rates and falling energy prices. My trading indicators are now giving mostly bullish signals and the Portfolio is 75% net long heading into the week.

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