Sunday, January 7, 2007

The Week Ahead

Next week is a light data week. The international trade position comes out on Wednesday. I would expect this to drop a bit, especially as oil has dropped in price. The import/export price index comes out on Friday.

Finally, we get retail sales on Friday as well. This should be interesting. Last month's number raised eyebrows with its 1% gain. I was extremely skeptical of this number, largely because all of the other retail numbers that came out at that time were nowhere near that good. I'm curious to see if the Census Bureau lowers that number.

There have been a ton of large deals over the last few months that have fueled the market higher. If we see some more of this large M&A activity I would expect the market to continue higher. However, we'll be bumping up against the interest rate environment as the market moves higher.