review the upcoming economic events that you should be monitoring. Although earning season

had some good news last week, most of the reports were lackluster with Wal-Mart warnings

shaking up the markets. This week is not expected to be much better. Most of the major US banks

reported their quarterly numbers, and falling income for the trading desks was a common

theme. This week will see industrial and commodity-focused companies report their numbers. There are

around 30 companies to report earnings on Monday. Among those to report are Morgan Stanley

and IBM. On Tuesday, almost 60 companies are to issue earnings including Lockheed Martin,

Verizon and Yahoo!. Poor inflation data from Western countries

will delay interest rises in the US and the UK, and Canada and the ECB could be on the

way to additional loosening of its monetary policies.

This week’s big economic event will be the ECB meeting on Thursday. With growing speculation

that the ECB will expand or extend its stimulus measures, that correlation could reemerge

where risk assets will perform quite strongly and fixed income can perform strongly as well.

The central bank, which started its 1.1 trillion-euro asset-purchase plan in March, has an inflation

goal of just below 2 percent. Analysts say that the ECB is widely expected to announce

an extension of its stimulus plan beyond the intended completion date of September 2016.

There is plenty to watch in China and the United States over the coming week. The week

kicks off on Monday in China when a raft of indicators is released. Most interest will

be in the economic growth figures for the September quarter. Growth is tipped to have

eased from the 7 per cent annualized rate recorded in the June quarter.

However, on the same day, data on investment, production and retail sales are expected for

the September month. While production growth has softened to a 6 per cent annualized rate,

retail spending is growing at a 10.4 per cent annualized rate in inflation-adjusted terms.

It takes a while for this to sink in: the second largest economy on the planet is recording

10 per cent annual growth in real consumer spending.

On Friday so-called 'flash' or preliminary readings on manufacturing activity are expected

in the US, Europe, China and Japan. While the value of producing an extra indicator

can be questioned, the final reading is released around a week later- some analysts continue

to follow the data.