Before I get to this weeks calendar, I wanted to look back at some reports that came out last week because there were some surprising numbers. Perhaps the biggest surprise came from the Durable Goods Orders report from last Wednesday which showed an increase of 1.3 percent when the market expected zero growth. Also exceeding expectations were the Existing Home Sales figures, which beat by 100k units, and Consumer Confidence, which posted a 56.9 reading, well above the 53.0 reading that was expected. The final report of note that beat expectations was the Q2 Preliminary GDP figure, which came in at 3.3 percent, above the 2.7 percent that was anticipated.

Moving on to this week’s calendar, with the markets closed today there are plenty of reports packed into the remaining four days. Tomorrow at 10:00 AM the ISM Index will be released and expectations are for a reading of 49.5, showing a slight contraction from last month, when the reading was a 50.0.

This is in line with the expectations for the ISM Services Index, which is expected to show the same half of a percent contraction, from 49.5 last month to a reading of 49.0 this month. Anything below 50 on the ISM reports is considered contraction, whereas anything above 50 is considered expansion.

The unemployment rate for August is set to be released on Friday, and is expected to match the July figure of 5.7 percent. While expectations are to simply match the July figure, it should be noted that the unemployment rate in July was the highest this year. So if this months figure comes in higher, it will be the highest this year and the highest since March of 2004. Also on Friday, the Nonfarm Payrolls figure for August is released, and expectations are for another 61k jobs lost in August. As Rick points out in his article above, this would push the total amount of jobs lost this year to over 500,000.

The final item of note this week is the Fed Beige Book that comes out on Wednesday at 2:00 PM.  It will be interesting to see if in this report any of the 12 districts are showing any signs of economic recovery.

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