Coming Up On Wall Street

Good morning. It is 64 degrees, hazy, and eerily quiet here in Upstate NY. The forecast predicts rain later today, at the moment its dry. We are waiting to see what kind of storm Irene will land on this part of New York. Most people expect to deal with power outages and fallen limbs and trees from high winds. In my area we get power outages and trees down from mild winds, its a very wooded area. There is a huge oak tree in our front yard and right now it makes us concerned. At the Y last night, the talk was about Irene, generators, and sump pumps. Everybody around here depends on a sump pump to keep the basement dry. Everybody depends on a generator to keep the sump pump going during the power outages. One of my jobs today will be readying the generator.

Wall Street also has an eye on Irene. For now the market is expected to open on Monday but that call could change as the weekend proceeds.

Some people say the storm could disrupt a rally resulting from the Bernanke dialogues. Lots of ifs as usual.

Regardless, investors will be looking at a slew of data on our distressed economy through the upcoming week. The big enchilada comes on Friday with a government release of numbers on employment in August. Officially the unemployment rate is 9.1% and nobody excepting a few overly optimistic idealogues believes the actual number is that low. Its probably more like 18%.

Hard to believe that we are heading into September. Its been a very memorable and glorious Summer.

Reuters: Stocks eye perfect storm of Irene and jobs

...the NYSE and Nasdaq expect to be open for trading as usual on Monday morning.


...August payrolls report next Friday.


....a torrent of data throughout the week...personal income and consumption on Monday, S&P/Case-Shiller home prices on Tuesday, factory orders on Wednesday and the Institute for Supply Management's factory activity index on Thursday.