The Economic Week Ahead: May 1-5

This is another big week for earnings reports, which have been mostly better than expected so far. In addition, the FOMC meets on Tuesday and Wednesday, when Fed Chair Jerome Powell holds his après-meeting presser at 2:30 p.m. In our opinion, it's a toss-up whether the Fed will do none or one 25bps rate hike. But our subjective odds of an announced pause is 75% either way.

We are expecting a modest improvement in April's M-PMI (Mon) and NM-PMI (Wed) as suggested by the S&P Global flash estimates (chart). March construction spending (Mon) is likely to remain just below its recent record high.