Global Concerns to Outweigh Data in Coming Week

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Global concerns hijacked the market a week after news of the Federal Reserve's plan to infuse the U.S. economy with its $600 billion program of long-term Treasury security purchases sent stocks to two-year highs.

This past week, renewed fears surrounding debt-logged eurozone economies and the impact that a probable interest rate hike in China will have on global growth caused U.S. stocks to finish with weekly losses of roughly 2%. Although the coming week brings a "datapalooza" to U.S. markets, according to Direct Access Partners' Mike Shea, U.S. economic reports will likely be a sideshow while the currency trade plays out on the main stage.

"We've got everything next week. I think the industrial production and capacity reports will be important because people will be watching to see that things continue to follow through. Retail sales on Monday will also be closely-watched for that reason," said Shea, managing partner in equity sales and trading at Direct Access Partners.

"CPI is always one of the most important reports and also one of the sketchiest because a large component of it is rent, and we all know rents aren't going up, but ask anyone who's doing Thanksgiving shopping, they'll tell you that food prices have gone up. So I think PPI will be a more indicative number than CPI," he said, adding, "But at the end of the day, I'm not actually sure that any of this data matters as much as what's happening in currencies. We're still very much in a global, macro trade."

In the past week, China said its consumer price index rose 4.4% year over year in October, bringing average inflation for the year to the government's target of 3%. That's increased the likelihood that the country will enact measures to slow economic growth.

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Meanwhile, concerns about how weak eurozone economies will pay huge levels of debt returned to the market.

"I think global issues will have an impact in the coming week," said Mike McGervey, president of McGervey Wealth Management. "Currency wars are likely to continue and the sovereign debt issues that were on the back burner for a while have come back -- and anytime they've come back, they've reared their ugly heads. They've had an impact here despite favorable news on our side," he said, pointing to a stronger-than-expected read on November consumer sentiment on Friday.