The Business Week Ahead...

It will be light week for the calendar but one focused largely on housing with existing home sales posted on Monday and new home sales on Wednesday. Neither has shown much punch of late and forecasters see mixed results for the February reports. Tuesday will see the FHFA house price index which also hasn't been showing much strength, though here improvement is expected. The factory outlook is another focus of the week with updates on Tuesday from the manufacturing PMI and also the Richmond Fed followed on Thursday by the week's highlight: the durable goods report which, despite the prior week's strength in the manufacturing component of the industrial production report, is expected to show declines.