The run-up to Australia’s GDP figures for the June quarter starts later this week with construction work and private investment data that will be terrible.
The June quarter national accounts and GDP will be released Wednesday week, the day after the Reserve Bank’s September monetary policy statement.
At the same time, there’s the now usual preliminary July data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that will update the June quarter’s national accounts to be released a week from this Wednesday.
The ABS’s COVID-19 household impact data is out today and the weekly payroll jobs data for July will be issued tomorrow (and will likely have been dragged down by the Victorian lockdown).
Wednesday sees the release of the June quarter construction data and the AMP’s chief economist, Shane Oliver thinks it is likely to have fallen 7%.
He also sees private business investment showing a similar fall reflecting the shutdown from late March with big cuts to investment in oil, gas, dwellings, and manufacturing.
Preliminary July goods trade data (tomorrow) is likely to point to a continuing strong trade surplus, but with signs of weakness continuing in the value of coal shipments and LNG.
The Australian June half profit reporting season will basically wrap up with 41 major companies reporting this week (See separate story).
In the US, the annual Jackson Hole central bank Economic Policy Symposium on Thursday and Friday will go virtual with the rather vague theme: “Navigating the Decade Ahead: Implications for Monetary Policy.”.
The AMP’s Dr. Oliver says this will be largely theoretical and it’s hard to see any near-term clues for monetary policy moves “but there may be some focus on the Fed’s likely impending shift to inflation average targeting under which a period of inflation overshooting will be tolerated providing an additional tailwind for investment markets.”
On the data front in the US there’s the usual end of month consumer confidence data, July new home sales (both due Tuesday), durable goods sales (Wednesday), a rise in pending home sales (Thursday) and a further recovery in pending home sales and core PCE inflation (Friday) – that’s based on consumer income and spending data and is preferred by the Fed as a measure of price movements.
Thursday sees the release of the second estimate of the US June quarter GDP (the first estimate showed an annual rate of fall of 33%).
The Republican convention will be held this week.
The eurozone sees German (Tuesday) and French (Thursday) business conditions/confidence surveys along with Eurozone confidence data (Friday).
There are also GDP updates for Germany and France this week.
The Bank of Korea reveals its latest monetary policy decision this week as well.
