Weekend Reading: Rates, Earnings Share Center Stage

A slight gain is expected as the market looks beyond a likely increase in interest rates and focuses on third-quarter results.

Author:: Paul Kedrosky
Publish date:: Sep 18, 2005 1:15 PM EDT

A slight gain is expected as the market looks beyond a likely increase in interest rates and focuses on third-quarter results.

Good Sunday morning. Here are some articles and papers worthreading. First, however, a look back at the week that just finished,and a look forward at the week ahead.

The major markets wobbled last week. While they ended relatively strong, that wasn't enough to turn in a positive week. The

Dow

and the

S&P 500

lost 0.3%; the

Nasdaq Composite

dropped a stiffer 0.7%.

Click here for the weekly performance.

Next week will probably see more of the same, albeit with thisweek's slight loss turned into a slight gain. Investors are nervouslyre-entering equities, post Katrina. And with next week's

Fed

meetingout of the way -- and almost certainly including a rate increase --people can return to their regularly scheduled programming, which willbe third-quarter earnings.

Turning to the economic week ahead, it centers on the FederalReserve meeting on Tuesday. We should see a quarter-point rateincrease to 3.75%, the eleventh such increase in the last 15 months. Investors will, however, parse the FOMC release closely to seewhether Greenspan & Co. think that the economy is still trundlingalong satisfactorily. Any hint otherwise will be met with realunhappiness -- and, more importantly, selling of stocks.

Over on earnings, there a few companies reporting worth watching.Among those, we will have

Circuit City

(CC) - Get Report

Goldman Sachs

(GS) - Get Report

FedEx

(FDX) - Get Report

and

Nike

(NKE) - Get Report

Finally, here are some articles and papers worth reading:

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Jettisoningpensions at places like Delphi is saving companies, butdangerously loading the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (New York Times)
Onlineadvertising is set to explode further over next 12 months(IDD)
ACat 3 hurricane hitting Manhattan could create one-millionevacuees (Financial Observer)
Anew hurricane has a bead on the Gulf (NOAA)
Books: Fascinatingstory of a scientific system that has beaten casinos and WallStreet (Amazon)
Skepticismabounds about Microsoft's new growth spurt (BusinessWeek)
HurricaneKatrina has highlighted free-spending government ways(Bloomberg/Baum)
Bushis only veto-less president in modern era (CS Monitor)
Barron's tipssolar power, Corinthian Colleges and PMC-Sierra (Barron's)
Skype/eBayis a reminder that all phone calls will eventually be free(Economist)
Isit finally gold's time? (Economist)
Speculatingabout what Google will do with its $7b cash pile, from WiFi, tofiber optics, to buying AOL (?!) (TheDeal)
Reuters'Contrarian Opportunities screen has whupped the major markets(San Francisco Chronicle)
Chinacould overtake U.S. and Germany to become world's largest exporterby 2010 (OECD)
Applied'sCEO sees a decline in semiconductor capex (EETimes)
Domesticstock fund inflows are up tenfold over the prior week(Institutional Investor)
Research: Thecross-listing effect when trading on a U.S. exchange (SSRN)
Research: NewIMF report on global financial stability highlights U.S. autocompanies (IMF)

Dr. Paul Kedrosky is a former highly ranked sell-side technology equity analyst, and he currently runs a technology finance institute at the University of California, San Diego. He is also a venture partner with Ventures West, an institutional venture capital firm with more than $400-million under management. Under no circumstances does the information in this column represent a recommendation to buy or sell stocks. While Kedrosky cannot provide investment advice or recommendations, he welcomes your feedback and invites you to send your comments to

pkedrosky@thestreet.com.