Reports Due on GDP, Durable Goods Orders

The nation’s economy may take a back seat to the holidays, but the week’s reports will still grab attention as investors look for more proof of an improving economy to justify further gains.

On Tuesday, Wall Street will get the final reading on gross domestic product, or GDP, for the third quarter. Analysts polled by Reuters expect the final number to be the same as the previous reading -- an 8.2% annual growth rate. That marked the strongest quarterly advance in nearly 20 years.

Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News said they expected that next year the GDP would grow at an average 4.4% annual rate. Although slower than the 8.2% rate of increase, such a pace would exceed the average for the record 10-year expansion that ended in 2001.

Orders placed with U.S. factories for durable goods, meanwhile, are expected to rise for a third straight month in November and new-home sales are also seen as climbing, helping to fuel the economy heading into 2004, economists said ahead of Commerce Department reports Wednesday.

Bookings for automobiles, machinery and other goods designed to last at least three years may have jumped 1% last month after surging 3.4% in October, based on the median of 53 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey of economists.

New-home sales are expected to increase to a 1.123-million annual rate from October’s 1.105-million pace, the survey found.

KB Home, which builds single-family houses in California, Texas and other states, said profit increased 12% in the three months that ended Nov. 30. Orders at the Los Angeles-based company rose 14% in the quarter compared with the same period last year. Backlogs were up 22%.

“The recovery appears to be riding a current of renewed optimism,” said Robert DiClemente, an economist at Citigroup Global Markets Inc. in New York. “This holiday season marks the first in several years not overburdened by widespread apprehension about the coming year.”

Personal income and spending data and a final reading on December consumer sentiment from the University of Michigan round out the holiday-shortened week.