Market activity should slow dramatically as Americans will spend most of Thursday watching NFL football and eating turkey. While U.S. equity markets will be open for a half-day on Friday, we don’t expect many traders to return to the office until the following week.
Canadian stock markets will be open throughout the American Thanksgiving holiday, but the lack of American trading activity will certainly impact volumes in Toronto.
Last week, U.S. retail sales for October were better than expected, core inflation was steady at 2.0%, and we saw earnings out of large-cap names such as Wal-Mart and Target.
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The results were mixed and suggested that the holiday season would be very competitive due to the state of the U.S. economy; but also that Americans are still shopping during a difficult time.
Gold prices gave up some of their recent gains as the U.S. trade weighted dollar strengthened; however, we saw very little movement for the loonie against its U.S. counterpart.
Q3 earnings season is ending on both sides of the border as most Canadian large-cap equities have posted their results before the Canadian banks report their fiscal year end numbers at the end of the month.
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In the United States, we’ll see an extension of the retail earnings we saw this week as Lowe’s Companies, Urban Outfitters and Best Buy will provide their quarterly reports. Hewlett-Packard will be the only Dow Industrial component reporting on Tuesday.
Economic reports will also be few and far between as attention may focus back on Europe as Greece prepares to make its next bond payment. There are a few housing statistics due in the United States while Canadian economic data will be dominated by retail sales and inflation.
@Gareth_RGMP