This week shows an incredibly busy economic calendar and this might not bode well for the market. The first report of the week comes out at 8:30 this morning and the schedule doesn’t let up until Friday morning. With so many important reports expected to show a decline versus last month, this could be a painful week in the market.

The first report of the week is Personal Income for August, which comes out bright and early this morning. The consensus is for a 0.20 percent increase versus July, and I expect this report will miss estimates. With the beleaguered economy, unless many American’s are picking up second jobs to supplement income, I would be surprised if this one beats estimates.

The Consumer Confidence report for September comes out on Tuesday and it looks like we are in for a decline versus last month. Given everything going on with Wall Street, I anticipate an even lower reading than expected. Depending on when this reading was taken, it could be much lower than the market is projecting due to the current concerns over the financial sector.

The ISM Services and ISM Index reports are looking like a mixed bag. The ISM Index is expected to post a 0.10 percent gain, to a reading of 50, which signals economic expansion. However, since the reading is supposed to be exactly 50, it would be difficult to deem it “expansion” if a reading 0.10 percent less, 49.9, would be deemed contraction. Let’s just call a reading of 50.0 “neutrality”.

The Factory Orders report for August looks like it will continue the gloomy outlook in the manufacturing sector. After posting a larger than expected increase last month, it looks like this month the report will fall back to earth. Expectations are for a decline of 1.80 percent.

The final report to look at this week is the Non-Farm Payroll report due Friday at 8:30 a.m. It looks like the economy continues to shed jobs, this month expectations are for another 90k jobs lost. Whether or not this factors in the recent Wall Street figures I don’t know, but in any event, this month after month shedding of jobs shows no sign of slowing.

Source: Employment Figures Likely To Show Continued Decline