Bottom Line
The focus next week will be on data that should give us some important evidence on whether the U.S. economy is recovering. Economists believe the best news will come on Tuesday, when they expect retail sales to show a 0.5 percent increase in June. Pessimists, though, will point out that this would leave sales up by just 0.2 per cent since March. But doom-mongers are likely to get more support in Wednesday's industrial production figures. These are expected to show a second successive monthly rise of 0.1 percent. This would mean that output fell in the second quarter and is still significantly below its peak, reached in June 2000. This would be an even worse performance than the eurozone's - Thursday's figures are likely to show that output there has been roughly flat so far this year. Against this will be the rising crescendo of earnings news.

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