Forget GDP, jobs and other reports such as Donald Trump’s expanding trade war with China, this week is all about Apple.
Late last week Apple warned the trade war would lift costs which would see prices of its products rise is Apple.
Trump replied Apple could manufacture more inside the US, forgetting that Apple once did that but Americans proved to be unable to do so economically being ill-trained and poorly skilled.
Now Apple launches the new iPhone plus updated versions of the iPad and iWatch, with an outline of the new operating system which will become available in October (IOS 12).
Tim Cook, the Apple CEO takes centre stage at the company’s big annual product launch on Wednesday (Thursday morning Sydney time), just weeks after it became the first US-listed company to reach a $US1 trillion market value.
The product launch will overshadow the political brawl, but as the biggest taxpayer in the US, Apple won’t shy away from stating its point of view.
Apple shares closed at $US221.30 on Friday, down 2.8% for the week. The company was valued at $US1.08 trillion. Amazon briefly joined Apple above the $US1 trillion mark but couldn’t sustain its rise and fell back to close on a valuation of $US995 billion.
In Australia, the August jobs report this Thursday is expected to show a small gain in new positions and unemployment around 5.4%.
Before that, there are the August business conditions and confidence surveys from the National Australia Bank tomorrow and the monthly consumer confidence survey from Westpac and the Melbourne Institute on Wednesday.
In the NAB survey (Tuesday) and consumer confidence (Wednesday) will be watched for the impact of recent political turmoil in Canberra.
Struggling department store chain, Myer is due to release its full-year figures on Wednesday.
Chinese economic data for August continues to flow the week after the release of August’s trade data on the weekend.
The AMP’s chief economist, Dr. Shane Oliver says we can expect to see a fall in producer price inflation to 4% but consumer price unchanged at 2.1% (both due later today) and activity data on Friday to show retail sales growth unchanged at 8.8%, but growth in industrial production picking up to 6.2% and investment picking up to 5.7%. Credit data will also be released.
In the US, apart from the Apple launch, Trump is expected to widen the trade war with China, a move that will send more tremors through financial markets.
On the data, front watch out for the August retail sales (to be released Friday) which is likely to show another strong rise and the Consumer price Inflation report for August on Thursday.
In other data releases the labour market hiring and openings report (the so-called JOLTS report) is out tomorrow night while Tuesday industrial production is out on Friday.
The AMP’s chief economist, Dr Shane Oliver sees the European Central Bank meeting on Thursday as reaffirming it will taper its quantitative easing program in the December quarter but that the start of rate hikes is a long way off – we don’t see an ECB hike until 2020 at the earliest.
In the UK the Bank of England meets and like the ECB, it’s not expected to change rates.
