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Four-hundred-forty-six times this week the market will get to dissect third-quarter earnings results. This much information should not allow much time for anything else.

In the midst of the mad earnings rush, however, the market will find time to focus on something more important than earnings.

Soon after the earliest earnings releases are out Monday, the New York Federal Reserve Bank will release its monthly index of manufacturing activity.

Compared with similar reports from other Fed banks or private organizations, this report, the New York Empire State Index, is new. It has been around only for four years and two months. Nonetheless, the index is one of the key gauges of manufacturing activity. On Thursday, the Philadelphia Fed will report its equivalent of the Empire State Index.

Tuesday's main news offering will be the Producer Price Index. Following the report last Friday that the Consumer Price Index's core rate rose a benign 0.1 percent, the PPI report hopefully will confirm that the underlying core inflation rate remains modest.

There are other reports due this week, but the Empire State Index, the Philly Fed Index and the PPI have something in common that could be more important to the market than anything traders will learn from the 446 earnings reports.

The PPI is a pure inflation measure. The two Fed indexes primarily are aimed at measuring manufacturing, but both have sub-components focused on prices.

Last week's report that core inflation remains subdued is underscored by expectations that the PPI's core rate (the base rate less food and energy) will be up only 0.2 percent. The problem is that these data do not square with the New York and Philly information.

As of last month, the prices received component of the Philadelphia data was nearly 89 percent higher than its monthly average over the last 37 years. Interestingly, however, it is still fractionally lower than it was early last year.

The New York prices paid measure (Empire State Index) is more dramatically skewed relative to its history. It now stands 140 percent higher than its monthly average during its slightly more than four-year history, but it, too, is lower than where it stood early last year.

The Institute for Supply Management's prices paid measure is less threatening than the Fed data, but it still is 37 percent higher than its 25-year monthly average.

The relevance of these price measures is that they are derived by surveys of manufacturing executives or, in the case of the ISM, the people directly involved in buying for their companies. The surveys not only reflect what has happened, but more importantly, they reflect what these corporate folks expect to happen.

The expectation aspect to these surveys is critical. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has made it abundantly clear that he wants to avoid a situation where expectations create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you feel that something you need to buy will cost more next week than it does now, you are likely to buy it now. If enough people do the same thing, the demand this expectation creates will raise its price now, not next week.

We have not had to worry about inflation expectations creating major problems for more than a quarter of a century, and the Fed does not want to deal with it now.

If the two Fed reports this week continue to show elevated levels for their price components, the expected strong earnings reports from companies this week, and throughout earnings season, are likely to take a backseat to the potential that the Fed will do whatever is necessary to rein in price expectations.

If the words in the old cliche "location, location, location" are the three keys to real estate, then the equivalent for stocks would be "earnings, earnings, earnings."

This week, however, the market might be more concerned about its P-E ratio, as in price to expectations, rather than price to earnings.

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