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With the stock markets closed in observance of what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s 94th birthday (yesterday), we take this opportunity to look forward to what’s most important on the investment agenda. It turns out there’s a lot for this holiday-shortened week, from main economic prints to big names bringing forth Q4 earnings results.

Perhaps the biggest of these economic reports this week comes on Wednesday when Retail Sales for December is released. There are few more direct inflation metrics than monthly retail sales, and we are expecting a -1.0% downtick for last month, following a -0.6% drop the month before. Also, the final Producer Price Index (PPI) for December is also out Wednesday, expected to come in at -0.1% from a previous +0.3%.

And that’s only for starters: the Empire State manufacturing survey is expected tomorrow, and Industrial Production/Capacity Utilization is on Wednesday. Then the Philly Fed survey gets to us on Thursday, for a decent swath of our Manufacturing picture all told, both regionally and throughout the country. For Housing, there’s the Homebuilders Index Wednesday, Starts and Permits on Thursday, and Existing Home Sales Friday. Employment gets registered by Thursday’s Weekly Jobless Claims and Continuing Claims.

This is before mentioning Q4 earnings season, which continues to roll forward before the spigot opens wide next week: Wall Street investment houses Goldman Sachs (GS - Free Report) and Morgan Stanley (MS - Free Report) are tomorrow, airline United (UAL - Free Report) and American (AAL - Free Report) are Tuesday and Thursday, respectively, Procter & Gamble (PG - Free Report) is Thursday as well, as is streaming giant Netflix (NFLX - Free Report). One could say this will be a full week.

We’ll also hear from some voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee ahead of the next Fed meeting, which starts two weeks from tomorrow. There is a blackout period in the week before the Fed meets to decide new interest rate levels, so if there is anything pertinent, it’s likely to come out this week, also. We’ve already heard our first considerations last week that a 25 bps rate hike might be in the cards on February 1st, rather than the 50 bps we say last meeting or the 75 bps in the previous four.

Markets are up nicely over the past five sessions, led by the small-cap Russell 2000, which has gained +4.9% over that stretch. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is +3.9% during the same time period, followed by the S&P 500 at +2.3%. Pulling up the rear is the blue-chip Dow Jones, which outperformed all major indices in 2022, +1.7% over the last five trading days. These economic and Q4 earnings reports will have a lot to say about where these trajectories are headed.

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