Source: The Canadian Press

Geopolitical concerns centred around Egypt, corporate earnings and most particularly the latest reading on U.S. job creation will set the tone on stock markets this week.

Investors will start the week by keeping a close watch on commodity prices which surged Friday after thousands continued to riot against the government in Egypt and unrest threatened to spread across the Middle East.

Traders ended last week by piling into resource stocks and oil and gold futures as investors sought the usual safe havens.

“I think this thing could continue for the foreseeable future,” said John Kurgan at commodities futures broker Lind-Waldock.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty there.”

Uncertainty going into the weekend had sent oil surging almost US$4 and gold up just under US$22.

Meanwhile, employment reports for Canada and the U.S. come out Friday and hopes are high that the American data will show that job creation is still on track.

“The employment report will be critical,” said Norman Raschkowan, North American strategist at Mackenzie Financial Corp.

“I think in order for confidence to come back, in a sustained fashion for consumers, and for investors you really need to see improvements in the employment picture.”

Expectations are relatively modest for the report at about 150,000 new jobs in the U.S. for January.

That would follow a December report that missed expectations, but that markets took as a positive because of sharp upward revisions to October and November data.

However, economists point out that the month of January has its own unique set of problems.

BMO Capital Markets senior economist Michael Gregory noted January is the weakest month for job growth from a seasonal perspective.

“Businesses tend to slow in hiring and unfortunately, perhaps out of kindness or whatever for tax reasons a lot of people that will get laid off potentially in December tend to (lose their job in January) and not through the holidays so for that reason you tend to get very soft kind of job numbers,” he said.

However, Gregory also noted that stimulus measures by the U.S. government late last year could give the numbers a boost.

An extension of income tax cuts received the most publicity, but the Obama administration also enacted an increase in depreciation allowances for capital spending.

“(Companies) have a reason to take all their capital spending plans that they would have done over the next maybe two years and squeeze it into one year,” Gregory said.

“The other one was an unexpected cut in payroll taxes.”

Even so, the creation of 150,000 jobs during this stage of an economic recovery is well below the level of growth normally expected.

“People will start breathing a lot more comfortably when they start seeing 200,000-plus on a consistent basis,” said Gregory, adding that improved economic conditions and last month’s stimulus could mean job creation at that level by mid-year.

As for Canada, Gregory expects to see more of the same kind of job creation seen over the past few months.

“We’ve seen job growth bounce around between 10,000 and 20,000 per month which is not bad,” he said.

“Not a boom but a solid steady pace and that’s the kind of number we see.”

Meanwhile, investors will look to another flock of corporate earnings.

In Canada, oil companies take centre stage as Imperial Oil (TSX:IMO) releases results on Monday and Suncor Energy (TSX:SU) reports Wednesday.

Raschkowan said the overall market consensus for year-over-year earnings growth is over 20%, a figure he expects to see revised.

“I think it’s more due to concerns about cost increases in some of the natural resource businesses,” he said.

“The cost of labour, (the) cost of equipment, all of the operating costs are being pushed up because of strong demand. I still expect that we’re going to have very strong earnings growth this year in Canada and will provide good support for the market.”

In the U.S., investors take in earnings from ExxonMobil on Monday, freight company UPS on Tuesday and drug company Merck on Wednesday.