The world’s leading economy continues to suffer from the aftermath of the worst financial crisis in decades, where lack of fundamentals over the past few days has lead investors to shift stock markets into the directions they desire as they step back to reassess and take positions depending on the outlook they thought the economy is headed.
U.S stocks future declined in today’s trading where the S&P 500 might stop the two day decline before the release of job sector data from the U.S; the labor department will release the jobless claims report every Thursday, which is expected to show a slight decline in the week ending on March 6 to 460 thousand, compared with the previous 469 thousand; meanwhile the number of applicant receiving governmental benefits is projected to remain unchanged by the week ending February 27 at 4.500 million applicants.
U.S. stocks managed to end yesterday’s trading session in green, as a drop in wholesale inventories and better than improving corporate bond market boosted confidence among investors about the outlook of the U.S; whereas the improvement noted over the past period helped conditions in the U.S. to rise and report strong growth in the fourth quarter of 2009.
Expectations show that the economy of the U.S will expand this year in an annual average rate of 2.75 percent throughout the first six months of this year, which revise the previous 2.9 percent; while coming below the 5.9 percent strong growth rate that was reported by the commerce department regarding the fourth quarter of 2009.
In addition, the U.S economy will release the Trade Balance report for the month of January where it’s projected to show a slight setback from the previous reported deficit of $40.2 billion to reach in January $41.0 billion. The slight wider deficit comes as a natural cause for weak spending, despite the fact that conditions in the U.S improved gradually in January, which was seen throughout the data presented by the economy over that period, but energy prices along with the advance of the dollar against most counterparts over the past period affected exports in the U.S and forced it to witness a slight slump.
As for Canada, the Canadian economy will release the international merchandise trade for January, which is projected to show a rise of 0.2%; compared with the previous slump of 0.2%, in addition the Canadian housing sector will release the new housing price index for January which is projected to remain unchanged at 0.4%.
Expectations for both the Canadian and the U.S economy shows that both economies will witness better and improving conditions throughout this year as its considered a revival and recovery year for both, but as the U.S is considered the biggest trading partner with Canada. The economy of the U.S will be the first to recover and influence the Canadian economy and help it recover from the worst financial crisis in decades.
So far, the Dollar is slumping on the daily scale against majors where its shown in the U.S Dollar index that is currently trading at 80.375, where it reached the highest for today at 80.568 and the lowest at 80.341, Gold prices slumped as well in trading so far reaching $1105.81 an ounce; while oil rose to $82.11 a barrel, it seems that investors are targeting stocks and higher yielding assets before the news, which will set the general direction for today but overall expectations show that trading will not be affected by the news as investors will continue to target higher yielding assets and stocks as long as the jobless claims report do not rise unexpectedly.
