Here’s what we know: bailouts continue, the market takes brief rests to recover some ground between bouts of freefall, and everyone is looking towards January 20 for a fresh start.

Unfortunately, we can’t just suspend everything and sit on our hands until the new president is sworn in, so we have to cope as best we can.

The CPI and PPI Indexes for October come out this week and are expected to show a significant decline. This can be mostly attributed the continued drop in energy (gas) prices. The Core CPI and Core PPI price indexes on the other hand look like they will show a small jump since these indexes exclude energy prices.

The Housing figures are expected to be as depressing as you would expect. The Building Starts are likely to show a decline of 35k units, and the Housing Starts are expected to show a decline of 37k units. Until this unsold inventory works its way out of the market, starts will continue to decline. Next month should show an even larger decline, as starts in northern markets end as the ground freezes.

The final report of interest this week is the Philly Fed report. In what should come as a surprise, the report is expected to show an improvement. The reading last month was -37.5, and this month is looking like a reading of only -30. This is an improvement, meaning the outlook isn’t as gloomy (for the purchasing managers at least) as it was last month. While it still has a long way to go to show expansion, it is at least temporarily moving in the right direction.

Source: Pricing Indexes and Housing Highlight a Very Busy Week