Monday 11 January
- Trading statement from Abcam
- Chinese inflation figures
Tuesday 12 January
- Robert Walters is the first FTSE 250 recruiter to report changes in fee income for Q4 2020. It will be followed by Page Group on 13 January and Hays on 14 January. AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould notes their decline in fee income had been slowing by Q3 2020. UK activity at all three recruiters has been lagging business levels overseas. Mould also recommends keeping an eye out for the mix in hires between temporary and permanent positions.
- Trading statements from JD Sports Fashion, THG Holdings, Games Workshop and Vistry
- British Retail Consortium retail sales figures
- US NFIB smaller companies’ confidence survey
- US Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), which assesses the number of job vacancies
Wednesday 13 January
- Trading updates from Just Eat Takeaway.com, Sainsbury and Asos
-
Persimmon trading update: Investors will be looking to see if November’s mini-lockdown in England made any difference to the fourth quarter of 2020 or whether the wider, more stringent measures just introduced across most of the UK will affect the outlook for 2021, says Mould. He adds that pricing trends will also be worthy of note, especially as the interim figure of £225,000 represented a small increase on the £216,000 average seen in 2019.
- EU industrial production data
- US oil inventories data
- Federal budget balance
- Federal Reserve’s first ‘Beige Book’ of the year
Thursday 14 January
- Trading updates from Primark-owner Associated British Foods, Whitbread, Dunelm, Taylor Wimpey, Halfords and Boohoo
- Tesco Christmas trading update: The supermarket giant has seen volumes and sales go up amid the pandemic but so have Covid-related costs, by £725m at the company’s last count. Mould notes Tesco does not usually publish profit or cash flow figures alongside its Christmas update so attention will focus on the like-for-like sales growth figures for the third quarter and the year overall.
- US weekly jobless claims figures
- In Japan, a trading update from Uniqlo-owner Fast Retailing
- In the USA, quarterly figures from asset management giant Blackrock
Friday 15 January
- Trading update from The Gym Group
- UK construction, manufacturing and industrial production data
- US retail sales figures
- Empire State (New York Fed) manufacturing survey
- In the USA, the quarterly reporting season starts in earnest with Q4 results from megabanks JP Morgan, Citigroup and Wells Fargo
