Alcoa Earnings: Tomorrow's Headliners

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Alcoa (AA Quote) will be in focus Wednesday as the aluminum giant kicks off the third-quarter earnings reporting season.

Alcoa is expected to post a loss of 11 cents a share on revenue of $4.5 billion, according to a poll of analysts by Thomson Reuters. If analysts are correct, it would be the Dow Jones Industrial Average component's third straight quarterly loss.

While Alcoa marks the unofficial start of the earnings reporting season, several companies will be worth watching before the start of trading Wednesday. Costco Wholesale (COST Quote), Monsanto (MON Quote) and Family Dollar (FDO Quote) are among those set to report quarterly results early Wednesday.

Ruby Tuesday (RT Quote), meanwhile, joins Alcoa in reporting after the end of the trading day Wednesday.

The economic docket is thin once again, with the August report on consumer credit and the Treasury Department's budget for September scheduled for release at 2 p.m. EDT. The schedule picks up Thursday, though, with reports on initial jobless claims and wholesale inventories.

Investors will also be focusing on the Energy Department's weekly inventory report, due at 10:30 a.m. EDT. Crude oil inventories likely rose by 2 million barrels last week, a Bloomberg survey of analysts shows.

-- Written by Robert Holmes in New York.