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Live: ASX edges higher after Wall Street rally rolls on, gold sector heats up with $5 billion takeover

Live: ASX edges higher after Wall Street rally rolls on, gold sector heats up with  billion takeover

Australia

Mon: Home prices (Nov), Building approvals (Oct), Retail trade (Oct), Inventory and company profits (Q3), Inflation gauge (Nov), Job ads (Nov), Metcash half-year results

Tue: Balance of Payments (Q3),

Wed: Economic growth/GDP (Q3)

Thu: Trade balance (Oct), Household spending indicator (Oct)

International:

Mon: CH – Caixin manufacturing PMI (Nov)

              US – ISM manufacturing index (Nov), Construction                                      spending (Oct)

             JP – Manufacturing PMI (Nov)

             EU – Manufacturing PMI

             UK – Manufacturing PMI

Tue:    US – JOLTS job openings (Oct)

Wed: CH – Caixin services PMI (Nov)

              US – ADP employment (Nov), ISM services (Nov)

Thu:   US – Trade balance (Oct), Job cuts (Nov)

Fri:      US – Non-farm payroll jobs, unemployment (Nov)

              EU – GDP (Q3)

It’s an absolute banger of a week for economic data at home.

To paraphrase Roy and H.G, who were most likely paraphrasing Mark Twain (“Too much good whiskey is barely enough”), it’s a week where too much data is barely enough.

Home prices for November have already been released, with the index up nationally 0.1% over the month, an insipid enough result for the compiler of the data, CoreLogic, to say the upswing in prices is over (at least for the time being).

The apogee in the festival of figures is Wednesday’s National Accounts (aka economic growth, aka GDP), but there’s plenty of other great data to be sifted through and analysed this week.

Later this morning, October’s retail trade figures will be released at 11:30am (AEDT) and should show a bit of an improvement, despite Black Friday sucking a lot of sales into November.

Building approvals (also 11:30am) have been both weak and, as always, volatile, but the trend is improving, and that is likely to be reflected in October’s figures.

Business indicators – inventories and company profits – will hit the screens at the same time.

They are another building block for Wednesday’s Q3 GDP and could well be a drag given the shrinking profits in the mining sector.

The final GDP partial, Balance of Payments (Tuesday)is expected to show a deficit of around $10 billion but could still well add to GDP growth as it represents a narrowing on Q2’s deficit.

GDP itself (Wednesday) is expected to show 0.4% growth over the quarter (+1.1% YoY), although the per-capita GDP recession riff will play on.

On Thursday, the monthly trade balance (October) may see the surplus grow to around $6 billion thanks to a pick-up in commodity prices.

The ABS’s Monthly Household Spending Indicator (Thursday), which will replace retail spending data next year, will be worth a look – so far, it has been tracking somewhat softer than the already soft retail spending data.

Offshore it is also a big week.

Around lunchtime, the “unofficial” Caixin PMI will measure the pulse of Chinese manufacturing – a precursor to a flurry of PMIs across major economies this week.

From a global perspective, US jobs data – employment and unemployment – is the big number but it won’t be released until Saturday morning AEDT.

That will give the blog something to bang on about next Monday, which in itself is a terrific thing.