Craig Johnson’s

Stocks continued their march higher on Monday. The S&P 500 set a new closing high, while the Nasdaq Composite exceeded its 2013 peak. Technology stocks came to life with large gains by Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft and others. The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee begins their two day meeting today. This week will have a full complement of company earnings reports and outlooks. In addition, the number of economic reports being released this week is unusually large.  The closely watched employment data for April will be released on Friday.   

Economic Calendar

April 29 - Monday
Personal Income, March (8:30): 0.2% actual versus 0.3% expected, 1.1% prior
Personal Spending, March (8:30): 0.2% actual versus 0.1% expected, 0.7% prior
PCE Prices - Core, March (8:30): 0.0% actual versus 0.1% expected, 0.1% prior
Pending Home Sales, March (10:00): 1.5% actual versus 0.1% expected, -1.0% prior
(revised from -0.4%)

April 30 - Tuesday
Employment Cost Index, Q1 (8:30): 0.5% expected, 0.5% prior
Case-Shiller 20-city, February (9:00): 8.7% expected, 8.1% prior
Chicago PMI, April (9:45): 52.0 expected, 52.4 prior
Consumer Confidence, April (10:00): 61.0 expected, 59.7 prior

May 1 - Wednesday
MBA Mortgage Index, 04/27 (7:00): 0.2% prior
ADP Employment Change, April (8:15): 155K expected, 158K prior
ISM Index, April (10:00): 51.0 expected, 51.3 prior
Construction Spending, March (10:00): 0.4% expected, 1.2% prior
Crude Inventories, 04/27 (10:30): 0.947M prior
FOMC Rate Decision, May (2:15): 0.25% expected, 0.25% prior
Auto Sales, April (3:00): 5.3M prior
Truck Sales, April (3:00): 6.7M prior

May 2 - Thursday
Challenger Job Cuts, April (7:30): 30.0% prior
Initial Claims, 04/27 (8:30): 346K expected, 339K prior
Continuing Claims, 04/20 (8:30): 3050K expected, 3000K prior
Productivity-Preliminary, Q1 (8:30): 1.2% expected, -1.9% prior
Unit Labor Costs, Q1 (8:30): 1.6% expected, 4.6% prior
Trade Balance, March (8:30): -$43.5B expected, -$43.0B prior
Natural Gas Inventor, 04/27 (10:30): 30 bcf prior

May 3 - Friday
Nonfarm Payrolls, April (8:30): 150K expected, 88K prior
Nonfarm Private Payrolls, April (8:30): 166K expected, 95K prior
Unemployment Rate, April (8:30): 7.6% expected, 7.6% prior
Hourly Earnings, April (8:30): 0.2% expected, 0.0% prior
Average Workweek, April (8:30): 34.6 expected, 34.6 prior
Factory Orders, March (10:00): -2.5% expected, 3.0% prior
ISM Services, April (10:00): 54.0 expected, 54.4 prior