Core durable goods orders an important release today

• US data in focus ahead of tomorrow’s Thanksgiving holiday;

• Core durable goods orders an important release today;

• Core PCE Inflation seen rising in line with CPI and PPI;

• Tomorrow’s OPEC meeting likely to cause unease in oil markets.

The combination of a highly stimulative environment in many of the world’s largest economies, along with strong recoveries in the US and UK is continuing to buoy markets on Wednesday.

With US markets set to close on Thursday as the country celebrates Thanksgiving, the end of the week may be very quiet as traders turn the holiday into a long weekend. That could make today even busier, especially with some data that would normally be released Thursday being moved forward to today. There is a lot of economic data scheduled for release today which could make for a very volatile US trading session.

Among all of the data releases, there are a number of key readings which makes today a very interesting one for the markets. For example, durable goods orders is due ahead of the opening bell and can be viewed as both forward and backward looking, making it a very good US economic indicator. Not only does it highlight the spending habits of consumers and businesses, the fact that it focuses on large investments on products that last longer than three years, means it provides insight into their economic outlook. People avoid spending on these large goods if they can if they anticipate tough times ahead. This makes it a very strong indicator for the markets. The overall reading can be quite volatile as it includes items such as aircraft orders which are large items and can be quite volatile themselves in nature, so many people focus more so on the core reading, which is expected to rise by 0.5%.

Being released alongside this number is the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, the core personal consumption expenditure price index. Inflation has become a hot topic this year and is likely to continue to be in 2015, although the US seems to be suffering far less from low inflation than many of the other major nations. The latest reading is expected to pick up slightly from October’s 1.5% reading, which would be in keeping with the CPI and PPI inflation readings, both of which showed an improvement when released last week.

Also alongside these figures we have the latest jobless claims number, which is expected to be below 300,000 for an incredible eleventh week, as well as the latest personal income and spending figures, so 8.30am in New York (1.30pm GMT) is going to be extremely busy from an economic data perspective and significant market volatility could follow.

Things then calm down a little until shortly after the open when we’ll get the latest Chicago PMI, the revised UoM consumer sentiment reading and the latest housing data, with new home sales and pending home sales numbers for October being released. Despite probably being the least important releases of the day, these still have the potential to bring big moves to the markets and therefore should not be overlooked.

Also on people’s minds today is tomorrow’s OPEC meeting when members are expected to discuss the option of cutting oil production in an effort to stop the slide in prices that we’ve seen since June. Many people are expecting no cut in production, as the biggest members of OPEC refuse to give up market share despite revenue falling as prices tumble. There is a big chance that we’ll see some big moves regardless of the decision as there seems to be a fairly even split between those expecting a cut and those not resulting in quite a tense stand-off.

The S&P is expected to open 2 points higher, the Dow 17 points higher and the Nasdaq 8 points higher.