Schacknow - TODAY'S PRIMER, June 16, 2011

Peter Schacknow, Senior Producer, CNBC Breaking News Desk

Tuesday's stock market rally is now a distant memory, with Greek debt worries spurring a Wednesday selloff that more than wiped out the Tuesday gains. The major averages are now solidly on track for their biggest monthly losses since May of 2010.
Though Greece remains a primary focus of investors, economic stats have been key in the market's widely varying movements this week, and are likely to be so again today. The Labor Department is out with the weekly report on initial jobless claims at 8:30am ET, with economists expecting a drop to 420,000 from the prior 427,000.

Also at 8:30am ET, the government issues housing starts for May, with consensus forecasts calling for 4.8% increase to an annual rate of 548,000 units. In April, housing starts fell 10.6%. And the first quarter current account deficit completes the trio of 830 stats, with expectations currently calling for a gap of $126 billion compared to a fourth quarter shortfall of $113.3 billion.

At 10am ET, the widely watched Philadelphia Fed survey is out, with forecasts predicting a June reading of 8.0 compared to May's 3.9. And at 10:30am ET, the EIA will issue its weekly report on natural gas inventories.

Though the earnings calendar is light, a few will undoubtedly grab some investor attention: supermarket giant Kroger (KR), food producer Smithfield Foods (SFD), and recreational vehicle maker Winnebago (WGO) are out with quarterly numbers this morning, while Blackberry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) will report after this afternoon's closing bell.

We'll also watch shares of retailer Macy's (M), as workers in New York agree to continue negotiating past a midnight contract deadline. Microsoft (MSFT) is set to make what it's billing a "special announcement" about its Kinect technology at 12:30pm ET/9:30am PT at its Redmond, Washington headquarters.

Dow component Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) is suing Oracle (ORCL) for discontinuing software support for products containing Intel's Itanium chip. HP Says Oracle is trying force customers to switch from HP platforms to Oracle platforms. Oracle says the lawsuit is "utterly malicious and meritless".

Citigroup (C) says the hacker attack that breached some of its credit card data affected about 360,000 customers, about twice as many as it had originally estimated.