Markets Brace for July Consumer Confidence, June Existing Home Sales, Greenspan Testimony
DEBORAH MARCHINI, CNN ANCHOR: The July consumer confidence report and the June existing home sale figures are both due at 10:00 Eastern time. I'm holding my breath.</s>DAVID HAFFENREFFER, CNN ANCHOR: And perhaps most importantly here, Mr. Greenspan also set to testify before the House Banking Committee at 10:00 a.m. Eastern time. And joining us now with more on the 10:00 a.m. line-up is Christine Romans.</s>MARCHINI: Hi.</s>HAFFENREFFER: And I've got to tell you, I was at a Bloomingdale's and a Crate & Barrel over the weekend, and it appears as though the U.S. consumer is still hopping.</s>CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you're anecdotal shopping evidence.</s>HAFFENREFFER: Yes, exactly.</s>ROMANS: It is true. Well, we're going to hear about July consumer confidence from the conference board. June existing home sales, and Alan Greenspan, all at the exact same time, half-an-hour after the stock market opens. So you can bet that first half-an-hour of stock market trade will be very closely tied to earnings, and then we'll dive into the latest read on the economy. Real quick, I want to take a look at that 10:00 line-up on that agenda. Consumer confidence is seen ticking up to 139.3, that compares with 138.8 in June. We've also got July existing home sales, that seen slipping slightly to 5.02 million units, at an annual rate from 5.09. Higher rates may be biting there. It was a very strong May, too. May saw existing home sales up 4.3 percent over April. So they're looking for a bit of a pullback, probably, in existing home sales for the month of July. Also that June confidence number, they're looking for a slight rebound in confidence. Even though there's talk of a slow-down in the economy, talk of slow-down in economy, stagnant stocks, the jobless rate is still very low, analysts say, and the July Michigan consumer sentiment saw a slight rebound, a 1.6 rebound. And they're saying that they've been very closely correlated, so it looks like there could be a rate rebound in these confidence numbers.</s>MARCHINI: When Mr. Greenspan spoke to the Senate Banking Committee last week, he sounded pretty happy with the way things were going on the economy, is there any likelihood he'll say something different to the House?</s>ROMANS: No, there's -- what the analysts are saying is that he could fine tune in the Q&A.; Remember, there are something like 60 members of the House Banking Committee, it is a huge number of people who have the opportunity to ask questions to him. So this could be a very long, a very long Q&A; session. So there's a lot of scope there for...</s>MARCHINI: Also a huge opportunity for them to make statements to be picked up by the papers back home. So it could be a long time before Mr. Greenspan even gets to open his mouth.</s>ROMANS: Exactly. So, basically, there's a lot of scope for a lot of comments and a lot of discussion of Mr. Greenspan's stance from last week. So it doesn't mean, you know, just because it'll be the same testimony that we shouldn't pay attention, basically, is what people think.</s>HAFFENREFFER: And we should note here that we will carry the Greenspan testimony live on CNNfn a little bit later on this morning.</s>MARCHINI: That's right, so we'll be keeping you updated.</s>ROMANS: Can't wait.</s>MARCHINI: I know, it could be a long one. Thanks, Christine, OK.