By Bryan McCormick
Retail will be a focus today, as it is every Tuesday with the release of the ICSC-Goldman Store Sales and Redbook Store Sales data. Housing Starts will also be reported.
The big event of the day is likely to be the FOMC Meeting Announcement at 2:15 p.m. ET, in which some traders expect to hear additional news about quantitative easing. Treasuries could react negatively to any indication that no easing measures will be taken. That ultimately could be quite bullish for stocks as capital might turn to stocks as traders exit bonds.
The ICSC-Goldman Store Sales report will be released at 7:45 a.m. ET. There are two components to the report, the week-over-week and the year-over-year changes. Most traders focus on the year-over-year reading, which makes for clearer comparisons.
The last week-over-week change came in at a gain of 0.8 percent. The year-over-year data in the previous report showed a gain of 2.6 percent. Stronger-than-expected positive numbers would be seen as bullish, while negative numbers would be bearish.
Housing Starts will be posted at 8:30 a.m. ET. Consensus calls for starts to rise moderately to 550,000 units, up from the previous 546,000. The range of expected outcomes is from a bearish drop to 510,000 units, to a very bullish rise to 600,000 units.
Redbook Store Sales will be reported at 8:55 a.m. ET. There are two parts to the report, the month-over-month and the year-over-year comparisons. As with the ICSC release, most traders focus on the year-over-year numbers.
Most traders focus on the year-over-year portion of the report for that reason. The last month-over-month change showed a loss of -0.1 percent. The previous report's year-over-year data showed a gain of 2.9 percent. Negative numbers in either series would be bearish.
(Chart courtesy of tradeMONSTER)
