The Market Week Ahead: Nov. 18

Nov. 18, 2019 - This week has a pretty busy economic calendar, but most of the data is housing related. It's going to take a pretty big surprise, or a pattern of surprises in the same direction to move the broader stock market very much.

Minutes from the Federal Reserve's most-recent meeting are probably the most-likely driver of volatility this week (in the pre-scheduled category anyway), although, given the central bank's recent messaging, it's hard to imagine exactly what the minutes would have to contain to get much reaction.

Consumer Sentiment rounds out the week on the data front, but Friday's report is an update to preliminary numbers that were already reported. Big revisions aren't unheard of, but aren't super common either. So it isn't very likely that we'll be too surprised by what we get there.

Of course, unscheduled events have been the biggest drivers of volatility recently, and that seems like the case this week as well. Before lunch today, we already had a positive headline about trade talks, which was quickly canceled out by a negative headline. That seems to be the pattern recently, although the magnitude of trade-related swings gets smaller and smaller as we're now waiting for a "phase one" deal to be negotiated as opposed to a broader, all-encompassing deal.

Economic Events this Week

There's a lot of housing data on the docket this week, but the items most likely to move markets and the minutes of the most-recent FOMC meeting and Friday's consumer sentiment report.

Monday
- 10:00 a.m. - NAHB Housing Market Index

Tuesday
- 8:30 a.m. - Housing Starts
- 8:30 a.m. - Building Permits

Wednesday
- 10:30 a.m. - EIA Crude Oil Inventories
- 2:00 p.m. - FOMC Minutes

Thursday
- 10:00 a.m. - Existing Home Sales

Friday
- 10:00 a.m. - Univ. of Michigan Consumer Sentiment - Final

Earnings Reports this Week

We're into the tail-end of earnings season, but there's still some big names reporting this week.

Tuesday:

Before the bell: HD, MDT, TJX, TDG, ARMK

After the bell: PAGS, URBN

Wednesday:

Before the bell: LOW, TGT, PDD, SR

After the bell: NTES, CPRT, SQM, LB, JACK

Thursday:

Before the bell: PLAN, BERY, M, BJ, BRC

After the bell: INTU, ROST, SPLK, STNE, POST

Friday:

Before the bell: SJM, FL

Sector and Industry Sentiment

As part of the upgrade and redesigned InvestorsObserver, we are now calculating a proprietary Sentiment Score for stocks. This score looks at price action, volume trends and data from the options market when available to try to get a sense of how the market feels about a stock. We're replacing the lists of sectors and industries that have performed well or poorly over various time periods with a ranking of all eleven sectors in order of sentiment and then the top ten and bottom ten industries.