In a move that has caused confusion, there will be no Australia Day public holiday tomorrow, apparently. Instead, it will be on Monday, which is strange given (a) I thought we had stopped providing long weekends when national holidays fall on Saturday and Sunday and (b) the government is hell-bent on enshrining Australia Day on January 26.
Anyway, Australia is closed for business on Monday, including the ASX, and therefore FNArena. New Zealand is also closed in a mark of respect.
Next week’s local economic highlight will be the release of the December quarter CPI numbers on Wednesday. The NAB business and Westpac consumer confidence surveys are out during the week along with data on import/export prices, private sector credit, house prices and the PPI.
Friday is the first of the month, meaning manufacturing PMI numbers from across the globe, albeit Beijing always gets in early the day before with its manufacturing and service PMI releases.
The Fed will release a policy statement on Wednesday night. Jay Powell has now decided he’ll hold a press conference after every Fed meeting – not just quarterly meetings – which means changes in policy could be announced at any meeting, not just those in March, June, September and December.
That said, no one expects a Fed rate hike anytime soon given indications of being “on hold”, and certainly not next week.
US data releases will next week depend upon whether they are published by private or public bodies. In the latter case the government shutdown will mean no numbers. Presumably this includes Friday’s non-farm payrolls release.
Numbers for consumer confidence, private sector jobs and PMIs should be safe but I’m not sure on pending home sales, and I doubt PCE inflation.
The eurozone will release its December quarter GDP result on Thursday.
On the local stock front, we’ll see a late rush of resource sector production reports meeting the usual trickle of very early earnings season reports, including those from Credit Corp ((CCP)), CYBG ((CYB)), GUD Holdings ((GUD)) and Navitas ((NVT)).
