The mounting toll of coronavirus cases in Victoria and offshore in Brazil, India, Spain, and especially the US, will again dominate sentiment here and around the globe in the coming week.
In Australia, tomorrow’s Reserve Bank’s July monetary policy meeting will attract attention at the start of the week (although the surge in Victoria to more than 100 cases will likely overshadow this).
There will be no rate change from the RBA and Governor Philip Lowe will reiterate the central bank’s determination to keep the cash rate at 0.25% for as long as possible until inflation starts rising and unemployment falls sharply.
At the moment and for the next few months we will have no idea of the real inflation rate or unemployment except for indicative numbers from the ABS because the crisis is still in the early months of what will be a long period of time – three years at least – as the economy recovers and jobs are again created.
So far as Australian economic data this week – ANZ job ads today and housing finance on Friday.
The US saw another unwanted record on Saturday – the third day with new daily cases of coronavirus surpassing 50,000, hitting a new 24-hour high of 57,497.
The COVID-19 pandemic has so far infected 11,124,651 people globally and 2,808,003 in the US as of Saturday. It had claimed at least 526,003 lives worldwide, 129,476 of which in America according to Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Data releases in the US will be few – the services sector activity survey tonight, our time, job opening data tomorrow, a few early US second-quarter earnings reports (See separate story) this week as well.
In Europe, industrial production and retail sales data for May will be out this week and will give a clue to the health of the eurozone economy.
In Asia, June quarter inflation and producer price figures for China on Thursday.
Consumer price inflation will be dominated by what’s happening to food costs – it could end up close to 2% than the 2.5% rate forecast and the PPI will still be negative, around minus 3%.
China’s bank lending data is out next weekend – that will be for June and the first half of 2020.
The Malaysian central bank makes its monetary policy decision and announcement tomorrow.
This Friday sees the snap national poll in Singapore where a nervous government wants to reassert its dominance after continuing trouble to control COVID-19 infections for the past three months after initial suppression.
