The Week Ahead: Earnings Lighten Up

The economic calendar is fairly light:

• Tuesday’s CPI is estimated at 0.5%, 0.2% ex food and energy.
• Wednesday’s Housing Starts are expected to come in at a 1.475 million rate.
• Industrial Production, also on Wednesday, is expected to rise 0.2%.

Earnings season is winding down but there are still a few important reports due:

• Applied Materials (AMAT) reports on Tuesday and is expected to earn $0.28 on $2.35 billion in sales. I’m stocked up on tequila.
• BEA Systems (BEAS) reports on Wednesday but has already preannounced. Their guidance for next quarter needs to beat the estimate of $0.14, but investors will probably be disappointed by anything short of a buyout.
• Hewlett Packard (HPQ) also reports on Wednesday, and preannounced in the other direction. Guidance for next quarter is as close to a lay-up to exceed current estimates (sequential decline and year/year deceleration) as one can typically find.
• Intuit (INTU) reports on Thursday. Both earnings and guidance are anyone’s guess, but the long and short of it is that we expect tax refunds will be put to work.

There are a few other companies reporting (Autodesk (ADSK) and Marvell (MRVL) among them) in which I am interested but don’t have anything pithy to say about.

Disclosure: At time of publication author is long Intuit (INTU) call options.