Key takeaways:

• ASX earnings season wraps up with the likes of FMG, Mineral Resources, Brambles, Flight Centre, and Harvey Norman

Economic Calendar and News

These are the major items on this week’s agenda:

• Australian preliminary retail sales data, due Monday, is expected to show modest growth

• Wednesday’s monthly CPI indicator will detail how inflation is tracking, with economists’ forecasts suggesting a reading of 5.1%, versus 5.4% a month ago

• Observers anticipate the housing market’s recovery continued throughout August, with the consensus view pointing to 0.7% monthly growth in dwelling values

• Other Australian economic data to watch includes building permits, housing credit, private capex, home loans, and investment lending

• In the US, look out for a second estimate for GDP from the second quarter of the year, which is likely to have risen to 2.4% since the last estimate

• Investors will digest July’s Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, with a headline quarterly rate of 2.6% on the cards, or 3.8% in terms of core goods and services

• US jobs data is also scheduled for later this week, with projections suggesting 170,000 jobs were added to the economy this month, for a steady unemployment rate of 3.5%
  
  

Stocks on watch

Some of the potential stocks in focus this week include:

• Monday reporting names: Appen (ASX: APX), Fortescue Metals Group (ASX: FMG), InvoCare (ASX: IVC), Link Administration (ASX: LNK), Mineral Resources (ASX: MIN)

• Tuesday reporting names: Adbri (ASX: ABC), ZIP Co (ASX: ZIP)

• Wednesday reporting names: Brambles (ASX: BXB), Flight Centre (ASX: FLT), Healius (ASX: HLS)

• Thursday reporting names: Atlas Arteria (ASX: ALX), IGO (ASX: IGO), Sandfire Resources (ASX: SFR), Harvey Norman (ASX: HVN)

• Packaging products designer and manufacturer Orora (ASX: ORA) could forge ahead with plans to acquire an offshore glass business, with reports suggesting the company may tap equity markets for $1 billion or more in fresh capital to fund the deal

• Shares in Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) enter the new trading week circling a nine-year low, with the stock in a downtrend ever since its earnings report unveiled a “challenging environment” and that it would raise prices for its Disney Plus and Hulu video streaming services

• US earnings will come from a diverse range of stocks such as cloud software firm Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), cybersecurity tech player CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD), semiconductor name Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO), EV manufacturer Nio (NYSE: NIO), computer giant Dell (NYSE: DELL), Chinese online retailer Pinduoduo (NASDAQ: PDD), and apparel company Lululemon Athletica (NASDAQ: LULU)