While the federal budget dominates business, markets and economic matters this week in Australia, globally it will be a combination of the March US jobs report and the final surveys of business activity for last month as well.
There’s also the continuing fallout of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the lingering impact of Covid (especially in China). Commodity prices, led by oil and inflation worries are also factors from previous weeks that haven’t gone away.
The biggest influence will be the fallout from the Putin invasion of Ukraine in late February and the continuing impact on markets – especially commodities and inflation.
March’s US jobs report is expected to show both a tightening labour market and rising wage pressures.
And that will make for an interesting market reaction after Friday saw the US 10-year bond rate rise above 2.5% for the first time in two and a half years.
Any upward surprises in the jobs report such as wages (even though wages growth slowed a touch in February) could be an immediate trigger of more hawkish rate hike expectations in the wake of last week’s bidding war by Fed members in getting rates higher and faster.
The AMP’s chief economist, Shane Oliver says the jobs report is expected to show another solid rise of 450,000, down from 654,000 in February and unemployment falling to 3.7%.
Economists at Markit (now part of S&P Markets Intelligence) see wages growth around 0.4% month on month and around 450,000 jobs as well.
Other US data releases expect continued strength in home prices and job openings but a fall in consumer confidence (all due tomorrow), continuing strength in the manufacturing conditions index for March (on Friday) and another rise in core private final consumption deflator inflation to 5.5% year on year (Thursday). That’s the Fed’s preferred inflation measure.
In Australia, besides the budget tomorrow night, there’s the end of month and quarter reports on market performances as well as start of month data releases.
Tomorrow sees the release of February retail sales, which are expected to show a rise of 0.8% as the rebound continues from the Omicron wave in December-January.
Thursday sees the release of building approvals for February (forecast to bounce 10% after a 28% fall in January), credit data to show a further rise in housing credit growth and ABS job vacancy data for three months to February.
Friday seems the release of February’s housing finance data and CoreLogic home price data for March (expected to show a small rise, but dips in Sydney and Melbourne).
Tomorrow sees the release of full year figures from Sigma Healthcare for its 2021-22 financial year.
Thursday sees the end of not only the first quarter of 2022 but also the half year for many companies and full year for a few others.
These include three of the four major banks – ANZ, NAB and Westpac (The Bank of Queensland balanced at the end February). Macquarie Bank balances its interim results as well. CSR and James Hardie rule off full year figures, Orica its half year figures.
The half-year ends for Nufarm, Incitec Pivot and Elders, as well as GrainCorp.
April also sees the flow of quarterly updates from a number of companies but especially resource giants like BHP, Rio Tinto, Santos, Woodside, OZ Minerals, Lynas and more.
China sees the release of the two March updates on manufacturing and service sector activity on Thursday and Friday.
Friday sees the release of its quarterly Bank of Japan Tankan survey of companies.
There’s also the eurozone economic confidence data for March (Wednesday) which will show the impact of the war in Ukraine and inflation data (Friday) is expected to show a further rise.
