Thursday could be an interesting than the marketplace, as the Kansas City Federal Reserve Jackson Hole Symposium goes on during the session. This is a collection of central bankers and big-money people from around the world to meet up in Wyoming to discuss various policies. On top of that, there will undoubtedly be as conferences and comments that could move the markets. With that, we could have a rather quiet session, or a sudden change in the headlines. With that being the case, we have to keep that in mind when looking at the economic announcements.
Looking at China, we have the HSBC China Manufacturing PMI numbers for August. Anticipated to come out and 51.5, they can often set the tone for the day. If the numbers are lower than anticipated, expect more of a “risk off” session for the day. Quite frankly, this could have an effect on stock markets around the world, sitting bearish tone. Quite a few of them need to pull back, so while a miss in China could bring the markets down, we would be more apt to sit on the sidelines and wait for the pullback to offer value. This is how we feel about all stock markets.
The Swiss Trade Balance number comes out later during the session, and we suspect that it will have very little effect on anything other than the USD/CHF pair. If the trade balances more positive than anticipated, expect the Swiss franc to pick up a little bit of steam during the session.
The United Kingdom Retail Sales numbers come out later in the day, for the month of July. The year-over-year number is anticipated to be 3.5%, and quite frankly the FTSE needs a little bit of good news. So does the GBP/USD pair for that matter. Expect both to get a little bit of a boost if those numbers come out a little bit better than anticipated. If they do not, anticipate the GBP/USD pair going directly to the 1.65 handle.
The United States has Initial Jobless Claims coming out, anticipated to be 303,000 for the previous week. This number can have an effect on the stock markets, and obviously a lower number could finally give the S&P 500 a little bit of a boost to break out to the upside. The NASDAQ are has, and quite frankly this should just send it higher if we do have less than anticipated initial jobless claims for the week.
The EIA Natural Gas numbers come out after that, and as a result we could see a bit of volatility in the natural gas markets. The natural gas markets are a “sell only” market as far as we are concerned, and quite frankly we would love to see a bounce. This would give us an opportunity to sell from higher levels.