First up in the week ahead will be the reaction today of yesterday’s oil producers meeting in Doha between OPEC and Russia and other non-OPEC producing countries.
The deal’s collapse will see oil prices come under immediate pressure.
The big attraction later in the week will be Thursday night’s meeting of the European Central Bank.
And Friday sees the release of so-called flash reports on manufacturing in parts of Asia, Europe and the US.
Watch also for the fallout from the impeachment vote overnight Sunday in Brazil against President Dilma Rousseff.
It could be quite destabilising and have a knock-on effect in other emerging markets which have just started recovering their poise after the big sell-down of the past year.
In the US, the key focus will be on March quarter earnings reports.
Around 100 major S&P 500 companies releasing their sales and earnings data – with the likes of Goldman Sachs, GE, GM, Microsoft, Netflix, Coca Cola, American Airlines, MacDonald’s and Johnson and Johnson down to report.
On the data front there are housing starts and permits on (Tuesday night, our time), existing home sales (Wednesday night, our time) and home prices (Thursday night, our time) – the market expects modest rises for all these releases.
In Europe, the ECB (Thursday) is unlikely to unveil further changes to monetary policy given the significant additional easing it announced in March but post-meeting comments will no doubt be watched as a guide to how it’s seeing the Eurozone economy proceeding.
Eurozone current account data is out tomorrow night.
In China there’s the release of housing market details later today and more data on March quarter GDP later this week.
The Bank of Korea releases its latest monetary policy decision tomorrow.
Japan’s March trade figures are out on Wednesday.
There could be some extra comments on the state of European banking and finance (especially after the creation of a ’bad’ loan bank in Italy last week).
In Australia, the focus will no doubt be on the Minutes from the last RBA Board meeting and a speech by RBA Governor Glenn Stevens (both tomorrow) for any clues on the outlook for interest rates.
Skilled vacancy data will be released Wednesday.
The Ten network reveals its interim financial results on Thursday in Sydney.
