Given the state of the high street, this year is unlikely to have started much better. First quarter underlying sales across its retail estate are likely to fall up to 2 per cent.Results: Full year - London Clubs International, Misys, Spice Holdings Interims - QXL Ricardo, Colt Telecom, MFI Group. Trading updates - Boots, Kesa Electricals, Ottakar's, JD Sports, N Brown, Invensys.FRIDAY: Cable & Wireless, long the centre of takeover speculation, will update shareholders on trading today. The telecoms company reported a 13 per cent rise in annual profits in May, and investors will want further roll-out of its broadband network.Results: Full year - none scheduled Trading statements - Cable & Wireless, Scottish Power.. AGMs - British Airways, Johnson Matthey.WEDNESDAY: Investors in GUS are desperate for the retail sector to buck up so the conglomerate can press the button on what many feel is a long overdue demerger of its Experian financial-services arm.On that front, the group's first-quarter numbers are likely to disappoint. The rush of Russian and other former Soviet countries' companies to join AIM, the junior market, has been a great success for the London Stock Exchange.

But investors are keeping an extra careful eye on corporate governance at these emerging market companies, and they do not always live up to the best standards. Small Talk hears expressions of concern, for instance, about Ukrproduct, the Ukrainian dairies group which floated in February. One of its three non-executives, Paul Williams, quit less than four months after flotation, officially to pursue other business interests, but also because of a boardroom dispute over governance standards. The Ukrainian executive directors have just taken pay rises of 15 to 20 per cent on the salaries that were published in the prospectus in January. Like-for-like sales at Argos are expected to fall for the second successive quarter, with analysts pencilling in a 5 per cent decline. Michelle Ryan at Lehman Brothers thinks Experian will offset a weak performance from Argos and Homebase with a 19 per cent rise in its sales.Results: Full year - none scheduled Interims - Corporate Synergy Group. Rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices have delivered better-than-expected results, and sentiment towards Arm is likely toimprove if it is equally bullish.Results: Full year - NCC Group, Universal Salvage, Private Equity Investor Interims - ARM Holdings, Low and Bonar Trading statements - Thorntons, Virgin Mobile. Boots returns to its hometown of Nottingham for its annual meeting for the first time since 2000.

It's a moot point as to whether the health-and-beauty retailer will be glad it bothered. Despite Richard Baker's best efforts as chief executive to revive the group, the market and Boots' under-funded history are against him.Last year was marred by profit warnings, the unexpected resignation of the finance director and the decision to sell-off its international health-care business. Trading statements - GUS, LogicaCMG, Peter Hambro Mining, O2.THURSDAY: This is the week's heaviest day on the results schedule, when consumer-spending trends will dominate the agenda. Your only lasting regret is that, by studying economics, you've spent two years filling yourself with ideas from an apparently non-vocational and abstract subject with no real application in the world at large: perhaps, in hindsight, you would have been better off learning Latin or Ancient Greek.This is an unfair caricature of the Government's and the Bank's approach to economic life But like any caricature, it contains a kernel of truth. Yet, here were the examiners expecting you to answer questions about other things: employment, house prices, the balance of payments, government borrowing, the exchange rate, globalisation. The list was seemingly endless. You drift home, wondering what's happened. How could things have gone so wrong? After all, wasn't your teacher's advice simply reflecting current policy priorities? Were you not responding to the repeated incantations of the Government and the Bank of England? Had they not claimed that inflation targeting was the solution to most macroeconomic ills? And had they not suggested that strong and sustainable growth was the prize that would "automatically" materialise so long as inflation remained well behaved?With these observations, you begin to brighten up.