Aside from ongoing third-quarter earnings reports from corporate America, equity ETFs could see action this week on new home sales, durable goods orders, pending home sales, consumer sentiment and third-quarter GDP. Also, investors will get the Federal Reserve statement on Wednesday afternoon.
David Kelly, chief global strategist at JP Morgan Funds, says the biggest number of the week will be the initial read on third-quarter GDP. [ETF Weekly Review]
Below are Kelly’s thoughts on the report and other news investors should be paying attention to this week:
“Despite recent more positive economic reports on the housing sector, the third quarter started slowly for the economy overall and weakness in overseas markets will have hurt U.S. exports in the quarter. Nominal non-farm inventory growth appears to have been relatively strong but much of this increase was because of higher prices while the impact of the drought on agricultural inventories should also be negative. Overall, we are looking for 1.7% real GDP growth, a bit below the 1.9% consensus number and implying just 1.5% annualized growth over the past six months.
Given this weakness in domestic GDP, no growth in the Euro area, negative growth in Japan and slow growth in emerging markets, this was always going to be a tough quarter for S&P500 companies, particularly those with a global focus. In addition, a 6% year-over-year gain in the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar has the impact of reducing the dollar value of overseas sales and profits.