Yen opens the week mildly higher against other major currencies. Asian stocks are trading lower with Nikkei trading down -255pts, or -1.6% at the time of writing. Commodity currencies are also generally lower. Japan machine orders dropped -0.2% mom in February versus expectation of -11.8% mom. Australia home loans rose 1.5% in February versus expectation of 2.1%. China CPI was unchanged at 2.3% yoy in March versus expectation of 2.4% yoy. PPI rose to -4.3% yoy versus expectation of -4.6% yoy. The economic calendar is light today and focus would be on speeches of US Treasury secretary Jack Lew and New York Fed president William Dudley.
IMF will publish new economic forecasts later in the week, ahead of the Spring meeting in Washington from April 15-17. There are talks that given recent comments from IMF chief Christine Lagarde, the fund would downgrade global economic outlook. Lagarde said last week that global recovery is losing momentum and "the recovery remains too slow, too fragile, and risks to its durability are increasing."
Looking ahead, two central banks will meet this week. BoC and BoE are both expected to keep policies unchanged and might provide little inspirations to the markets. In particular, UK markets and Sterling would look into firstly the BoE inflation report in May and the Brexit referendum in June instead. Meanwhile another focus in China, which will release trade balance, GDP and other key data. From US, retail sales, Fed's Beige Book, industrial production, etc will be watched. Here are some highlights for the week.
- Tuesday: Australia NAB business confidence; Germany CPI final; UK CPI and PPI; US import price
- Wednesday: China trade balance; Eurozone industrial production; US retail sales, PPI, Fed's Beige book; BoC rate decision
- Thursday: Australia employment; Swiss PPI; Eurozone CPI final; BoE rate decision; Canada new housing price index; US CPI, jobless claims
- Friday: China GDP, industrial production, fixed asset investment; Eurozone trade balance; Canada manufacturing sales; US Empire State manufacturing index, industrial production, U of Michigan consumer sentiment