Central banks led by the Fed grab attention this week. The US central bank will be joined by the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan while the Reserve Bank of Australia makes a contribution tomorrow.
The Bank of England (Thursday) and the Bank of Japan (Friday) are both unlikely to announce changes to their monetary policy stances, but the AMP’s Dr Shane Oliver says that like the Fed, both will be watched in terms of whether they push back against the recent rise in bond yields and worries about inflation.
Central banks in Brazil, Indonesia, Taiwan, Turkey and Norway are also meeting to set monetary policy for their economies.
In Australia, the RBA minutes (tomorrow) are likely to remain ultra-dovish consistent with the post-meeting statement and Governor Lowe’s speech in Sydney last week where he made it clear no rate rise until at least 2024.
The Fed has a two-day meeting mid-week with a statement and new forecasts and media conference after 6am Thursday, Sydney time.
On the data front in the US Dr Oliver says we can expect to see February retail sales remain strong reflecting stimulus checks, further gains in industrial production and continuing strong home builder conditions (all Tuesday), but a slight fall in housing starts (Wednesday) due to bad weather.
New York and Philadelphia regional manufacturing conditions indicators for March will also be released and are likely to remain solid.
There are a few quarterly earnings results released in the US – mostly smaller retailers like Williams Sonoma, Dollar General, Lands End, Guess? and Herman Miller.
Results from two major companies will also be released FedEx (how’s the online lockdown boom going?) and Nike.
On the data front in Australia ABS home price data for the December quarter is out tomorrow (Dr Oliver says it is expected to show a solid 2% quarterly rise in prices consistent with CoreLogic data already released).
Thursday sees the release of the February labour market data which is forecast to show a 15,000 gain in jobs but with unemployment unchanged at 6.4%.
Friday sees the release of the retail sales data for February, which is forecast to show a small gain of 0.5% gain as Queensland bounces back. September quarter population growth data (Thursday) is expected to confirm the hit to immigration and payroll jobs data will be released tomorrow.
Premier Investments is due to release its full first half results for 2020-21 on Friday.
Across the Tasman, New Zealand releases its December quarter GDP figures on Thursday.
Japan’s core inflation rate (Friday) for February is expected to have remained around zero and will confirm the weakness in the Bank of Japan’s monetary policy stance – inflation is supposed to be back around 2%.
And today sees the release of Chinese activity data for January/February. Dr Oliver sees the figures showing a huge rebound from the coronavirus shutdown depressed levels a year ago with industrial production and retail sales both up by around 32% and investment up by around 41%. Last week’s Chinese trade data showed a similar surge.
