Today's key events in the US, as opposed to Europe, where in a few minutes the ECB is expected to do nothing.
8:30: Retail sales (December): Holiday sales results. Final results for the holiday shopping season are due with the December retail sales report. News on major chain-store retail sales for the month was a bit disappointing relative to expectations, but does not include sales from new stores or from online-only retailers that will be included in the Census Bureau’s retail report. Warm weather may also have helped boost sales last month. Goldman forecasts an above-consensus increase in core/control retail sales (ex-autos, gas and building materials) of 0.5% (month-over-month).
Total: GS: +0.5%; Consensus: +0.3%; Last: +0.2%.
Ex-autos: GS: +0.5%; Consensus: +0.3%; Last: +0.2%.
Ex-autos, gas & building materials: GS: +0.5%; Consensus: +0.3%; Last: +0.2%.
8:30: Jobless claims (Week of January 7). Jobless claims have moved down significantly over the past 2-3 months, suggesting an improvement in labor market conditions. Consensus forecasts are for a roughly flat reading for the first week of January.
Consensus: 375,000; Last: 372,000.
10:00: Business inventories (November). Not a market mover, but the retail inventory component could have implications for our tracking estimate of Q4 GDP growth (which we revised down to 3.2% earlier this week on soft wholesale inventories).
Consensus: +0.4%; last +0.8%.
14:00: The US budget balance (December). The CBO estimates that the December budget deficit increased to $84bn from $78bn in the same month last year. However, most of the increase reflected shifts in the timing of certain payments, according to the CBO. Without these shifts the deficit would have been about unchanged.
CBO: -$84bn; Consensus: -$84bn; Last (Dec 2010): -$78bn.