This holiday-shortened week is back-end loaded with economic data releases, and a steady stream of earnings reports.

There were no economic releases on Monday due to the Thanksgiving and Columbus Day holidays.

Canadian traders won’t need to shake off their turkey-induced torpor until Thursday, when international trade numbers for August are released, along with auto sales for August. Manufacturing shipments numbers are up Friday.

“In Canada, more positive news is likely in the wake of the past week’s healthy employment gains, with manufacturing and exports recovering from plant shutdowns, and higher prices also boosting nominal values,” comments CIBC World Markets. “A wider trade balance could add a bit more juice to Canadian dollar enthusiasm,” it suggests.

BMO Nesbitt Burns says that the trade reports are being watched more closely than ever by the Bank of Canada, increasing their importance to traders, too. It expects the trade balance to push back up to $6.5 billion from $6.2 billion in the prior month, paced by a 2% rebound in exports and a 1.5% gain in imports.

Nesbitt also expects manufacturing shipments to extend their winning streak, although with just a modest gain of 0.2%. “However, we look for a modest 0.5% pullback in new orders, reversing some of the extraordinary strength in recent months,” it says.

In the U.S., international trade numbers are released Thursday, but Friday is the heavy data day, with the producer price index, retail sales, industrial production, capacity utilization, Michigan sentiment index and business inventories reports all on tap. Throw in a speech from Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and economy watchers will be hopping on Friday.

CIBC predicts that, “U.S. retail sales will see a nice but narrowly-focused gain, with non-auto sales perhaps a tad disappointing. We could see a bit of improvement in the trade deficit, but that will attract less enthusiasm given the widening likely in later months on higher energy import bills.”

Nesbitt forecasts retail sales to rise 0.5%, driven by higher vehicle purchases. It says the U.S. trade deficit is expected to widen to US$53.0 billion in August, which will be the second largest on record; and, business inventories are expected to increase 0.7% in August. “We believe businesses will pare the pace of inventory accumulation for the time being just in case the soft patch persists longer than expected,” it notes.

Apart from the data, Wednesday will also bring the third and final U.S. presidential debate from Arizona State University.

The other big factor to watch this week is earnings. “Watch for some sectors to warn about Q4 cost pressures from energy and raw material inputs,” CIBC advises.

CIBC notes that four Dow components are up this week, Johnson & Johnson and Intel report on Tuesday, Citigroup and General Motors report on Thursday.

Nesbitt calculates that about 9% of S&P 500 companies are slated to report, too.

In Canada, Teknion reports on Wednesday, Nexen Inc. and OPTI Canada Inc. report on Thursday, and TransForce Income Fund is up Friday.