Monday:

Earnings Announcements: BIDU, QCOM

Tuesday:

Economic Reports: Consumer Confidence, S&P/CaseShiller Home Price Index

Consumer Confidence is expected to show an improvement in April, although by a less than impressive amount. The reading is supposed to show an uptick of 2.8 percent, however an increase of 5 percent or more is considered ‘significant’. At this point, I think the economy will take any positive move it can get, small or not. Read the full story

The economic calendar is rather uneventful this week, so I wanted to focus on the big news from last week, namely the employment figures from last Friday. Read the full story

Consumer Confidence is expected to show an improvement in March when the report is released tomorrow morning. Nothing comes to mind as the reason for this sudden jump, so it may be nothing other than things were so bad, they could only get better at some point. Read the full story

After last weeks surprising housing numbers (building permits and housing starts actually increased) the housing reports this week are now even more unpredictable. Existing home sales are expected to drop by approximately 40k units, but I wouldn’t be shocked if this number actually beats expectations to the positive side and shows a gain. The reason is that foreclosures continue to create tremendous buying opportunities, and at some point, prices get low enough to spur sales.

The New Home Sales report that comes out Wednesday is also expected to show a decline, but I think this one will be a much larger than the 9k units that’s anticipated. With so much cheap existing inventory available, builders moving new inventory face many obstacles. Read the full story