Market Preview: Stocks Start Week With Deep Swoon

The other S&P 500 names on the docket are AutoZone (AZO), Compuware (CPWR), and Medtronic (MDT).

Medtronic shares are up 14% so far in 2011, but Wunderlich Securities sees the report as an afterthought since the company is in between CEOs after naming Omar Ishrak of General Electric (GE) to take over for William Hawkins. Ishrak joins Medtronic on June 13.

The economic data for Tuesday features new-home sales at 10:00 a.m. ET and durable orders at 8:30 a.m ET; both readings are for April. Economists are expecting April's sales activity for new homes to put the annual rate at 300,000, according to Briefing.com, and Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at High Frequency Economics is in agreement.

"New home sales are, as far as we know, the weakest major U.S. economic indicator," he wrote in a research note. "They remain close to their all-time low, having dropped about 80% from their peak, and we think it's unlikely that today's [Tuesday's] April report will show any improvement."

Durable orders are projected to be down 2%, Briefing.com said. Excluding transportation, economists are looking for a rise of 0.5%. Other datapoints on Tuesday include weekly chain-store sales numbers, the MBA Mortgage index, and crude inventories.

Finally, in other corporate news, Boeing (BA) is scheduled to hold its annual investor conference on Tuesday, while Yandex, the so-called Russian Google (GOOG), is slated to launch its initial public offering on the Nasdaq. The stock priced above range late Monday, and could see buying interest from any momentum players kicking themselves for missing out on LinkedIn (LNKD) last week.

--Written by Michael Baron in New York.



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