The Economic Week Ahead: April 17-21

This is a light week for economic indicators, but there will be plenty of earnings calls to keep investors busy. We will be focusing on the two regional business surveys for April released by the FRBNY (Mon) and the Philly Fed (Thu). Together, they tend to foretell the outcome of the three other regional business surveys released later this month as well as the national M-PMI (out early next month) (chart). Collectively, they've been getting weaker and weaker over the past year and a half reflecting consumers pivoting from spending on goods to spending on services. We expect to see some bottoming action soon.

March housing indicators released this week will be housing starts (Tue) and existing home sales (Thu). They are likely to suggest that the recession in single-family housing activity is bottoming as indicated by mortgage applications (Wed) in recent months (chart).