NEW YORK, Nov 8: After weeks of high volatility, Wall Street may find next week’s quiet macroeconomic calendar the perfect opportunity to regroup and plan for the final stretch of the dangerous year.

With no major announcements scheduled, investors may have an opportunity to ... assess the damage that has been done through the last several weeks, said Gina Martin, an analyst at Wachovia Securities.

For now, “a lot of investors are sitting on the sidelines and waiting to see how the market trades until the end of the year,” she added.

After a spectacular 18 per cent rise over six sessions, Wall Street was hammered last week -- once again in volatile trade -- as the brutal reality of the rapidly accelerating financial crisis sank in.

The economic downturn rapidly overshadowed the euphoria over the election of Democrat Barack Obama late Tuesday as the 44th president of the United States.

The Obama effect lasted only one day, as voters headed to the polls, lifting the markets in the biggest election day rally in history.

Unemployment worries drove the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average down nearly 1,000 points in the next two days: Wednesday the ADP survey showed the private sector shed 157,000 jobs in October, far more than already pessimistic analysts had expected, and Thursday, investors braced for a grim October jobs report due from the government on Friday.

Their fears were more than proved right. The US October unemployment rate rose to its highest level since 1994, official data showed Friday, with analysts forecasting it to move even higher in Obama’s first year as president.

The Labour Department said the jobless rate rose to 6.5 per cent as the world’s largest economy shed 240,000 jobs during the month amid the credit squeeze and downturn.

For this first week of November, the Dow fell 4.0 per cent to 8,943,81 points, after gaining more than 11 per cent in the previous week.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 4.27 per cent to 1,647.40 and the broad Standard & Poor’s 500 ended 3.92 per cent lower at 930.75.

The bond market renewed its safe-haven status. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond fell to 3.780 per cent from 3.970 per cent last Friday, and than on the 30-year Treasury bond slid to 4.261 per cent from 4.369 per cent.

Next week, only the retail sales numbers on Friday were seen as having market-moving potential, according to analysts, because of concerns that consumers’ growing unwillingness to spend will spell disaster for the all-important holiday shopping season.On the corporate calendar, the quarterly earnings season winds down.

The past week was littered with poor earnings reports, profit warnings and layoffs.

Toymaker Mattel, chip manufacturer AMD, electronics retailer Circuit City and credit card firm American Express all announced job cuts.

In the battered auto industry, carmakers slashed jobs amid heavy losses and asked the government for help to survive plummeting sales and tightening credit.

General Motors, the largest US automaker, acknowledged Friday it was on the brink of collapse in a cash crisis.

For Marc Pado, analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, investors already are looking ahead to companies’ fourth-quarter results.

Expectations are down in the dumps, he said.—AFP