Market Recon: 10/17/2012

Stephen J. Guilfoyle “Sarge”, is the U.S. Economist at Meridian Equity Partners since 2007. Stephen joined Meridian after a long career at Credit Suisse. Stephen has worked on the trading floor of the NYSE continuously since July 1987 and actively serves as a Sergeant in the National Guard.

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Good Morning,
It’s Wednesday….you’re getting there.  Presidential debate number two is out of the way.  Neither candidate won any undecided votes last night.  However, the President may have solidified a base that appeared ready to mutiny, simply by coming off much better than he did in the first debate.  The big macro comes out of Asia tonight, but I guess we’ll go in chronological order here, just to keep everything neat and pretty.  The only European macro we saw this morning, came out of the UK.  September ILO Unemployment reported in at a surprisingly low 7.9%.  Most of the drop is being attributed to folks finding, and settling for part-time work, something we are seeing in our own country.  The Bank of England also released the minutes of the MPC meeting of 4 OCT.  No surprises there, but with the current round of quantitative easing expiring next month, November’s meeting could provide some fireworks.
On this side of the pond, we have less macro to take in than we had yesterday.  September Housing Starts are due at 08:30 ET.  Hopefully, housing can continue it’s newly discovered wining streak.  The expectation for this one today is for a pace of765K annualized, with a range of 745K to 785K annualized.  How’s that for tidy?  The August print was for 750K annualized.  Look for a pace of 810K for Permits.  It would be the third month in a row that permits maintained a pace of 800K or better.  You’ll get your weekly dose of Oil Inventories at 10:30 ET.  Last week, inventories were up 1.7 million barrels, and this week, we look for a further increase of 1.4 million barrels or so.
There are quite a few headline level macro date-points to be reported from China tonight.  Come 22:00 ET, China will release GDP for the third quarter.  The projection here is for 7.4% coming off of Q2’s 7.6%.  I think that there is a chance that a number at or around consensus here will be taken as a positive, as traders look for some confirmation of stabilization.  At the same time, China will also release September Industrial Production (cons.: 9.0% Y/Y), and September Retail Sales (cons.: 13.1% Y/Y).
We have earnings a plenty once again today.  Before the open, you can expect quarterly results from BAC (-.07), BK (.54), BLK (3.30), CMA (.65), HAL (.67), KCG (-2.45), PEP (.16), DGX (1.18), STJ (.81), SWK (1.45), TXT (.52), USB (.74).  But wait, there’s more!!! After the closing bell, we still await results from AXP (1.08), CLB (1.10), EBAY (.54), and SLM (.54).  Now the real shock.  I have no position in any of these names.
There are two Fed speakers to be cognizant of today.  Minneapolis Fed Pres. Naryana Kocherlakota will speak at 14:45 ET from Great Falls, Montana.  He will face a Q&A session.  Two hours later, at 16:45 ET, Richard Fisher, Dallas Fed Pres., will speak again from the Cato Institute in Washington, DC.  He, too, will take questions from the audience.

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This post originally appeared at  Guilfoyle’s Market Recon.  

Follow the Sarge on Twitter here: @Sarge986