What to expect from markets in the data-packed but holiday-shortened week

Yahoo Finance's Emily McCormick joins the Live show to run down which market performance data will be made available this week, coinciding with the beginning of the holiday shopping boom in the retail space.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: And for more on what to watch this week, a shortened week that includes Thanksgiving, I want to bring I'm Yahoo Finance's Emily McCormick here to walk us through all of that, Emily?

EMILY MCCORMICK: Well, Zack, this holiday-shortened week will still be packed with tons of key new data here. Now in terms of the trading schedule this week, as you alluded to, we should note that the US stock and bond markets will each be closed all day on Thursday, and the stock market will also have an early close at 1:00 PM Eastern on Friday. But before that, a lot for traders to be keeping their eyes on especially in terms of new economic data.

Now, most of that is going to be coming out on Wednesday this week with weekly jobless claims. The second estimate of third-quarter GDP, and personal income and spending data, all due out on that day. Now we're also going to be getting the closely watched Personal Consumption Expenditure Index or PCE deflator out on Wednesday, so yet another inflation report after the much hotter than expected Consumer Price Index that we got out earlier this month as well.

Now economists are expecting a similarly hot print from the PCE deflator as well here. The broadest measure of PCE is expected to have risen by 0.7% in October, compared to September's 0.3% monthly rise. And over last year, the PCE deflator will likely have jumped by 5.1% or the most since 1990. And importantly, the core PCE which strips out those more volatile food and energy prices, likely also rose at the fastest pace in about three decades here. That is the Federal Reserve's preferred gauge of underlying inflation, likely rose by about 4.1% year on year in October. Again, the fastest pace we'll have seen since 1991.

Now, of course, after today's formal announcement that Biden was nominating Fed Chair Jerome Powell back to the top role at the central bank, the focus really is going to be on how and when the Fed decides to respond to these persistently elevated inflationary pressures. So again that is why the PCE will be one of the closely watched reports out on Wednesday. [? But moving slightly, ?] also want to highlight that we'll be getting a number of earnings results as well this week, including from Zoom Video Communications tonight, and Best Buy, Nordstrom, and the Gap out tomorrow.

And on the topic of the retailers, do also want to highlight that investors should be keeping an eye on the preliminary data coming out on Black Friday sales taking place on Friday. Now, this is going to be an important indication of the early strength heading into that all-important holiday shopping season. We've gotten earnings results out from retailers like Target and Walmart over the past couple of weeks that suggested that they were working through some of these persistent supply chain issues and continuing to deliver strong results but this is going to be closely watched as we head into the end of this week and, of course, the end of the year and the key holiday shopping season as well. But just taking a look at some of the estimates here, Mastercard SpendingPulse data is showing that sales are likely to rise by 10% this Thanksgiving week alone compared to last year. So potentially some strength as we look ahead to the data this week, guys.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, Emily. I don't know if the crowds over the weekend are any indication but it felt like at least, people have started their Christmas shopping way earlier than usual. Pretty crowded at some of the stores that I visited at least. Thanks so much for bringing us that preview for this holiday week.