Next Week
May 23, 2009
A busy week lies ahead despite closures Monday in the U.S. for Memorial Day and U.K. for a spring bank holiday. China and Taiwan will be closed Thursday and Friday for the Dragon Boat Festival, China’s oldest holiday.
Interest rate meetings are scheduled in Poland, Hungary, Israel, South Africa, Malaysia, The Philippines, and Colombia. Policy easings are expected in the last four cases. The Bank of Japan releases minutes from its late-April meeting, the one after which new, lower growth and price forecasts were announced. OPEC’s oil ministers meet in Vienna on Thursday but are not expected to modify production guidelines.
Scheduled U.S. data feature revised first-quarter GDP (should be downward), the Case-Shiller house price index, new and existing home sales, and both the U. Michigan and Conference Board measures of consumer confidence. Durable goods orders, the FHFA housing index, mid-western PMI readings, and Richmond, K.C. and Dallas Fed indices are due, too. So are the usual weekly figures for energy inventories, jobless insurance claims, and chain store sales.
Japan has a loaded calendar as well, led by industrial output, household spending, retail sales, unemployment, and the all-industry index. Japan will also be releasing customs trade figures, construction orders, housing starts, corporate service prices, the Shoko Chukin index of small-firm sentiment, and the manufacturing PMI. Finally, the Bank of Japan will publish its monthly report.
It’s a light week for Britain — just house prices, mortgage approvals, consumer confidence and the CBI monthly survey of retailers.
But Euroland announces a considerable number of statistics. From Euroland as a whole, there’s industrial orders, economic sentiment and its business and consumer components, unemployment, consumer prices, and the retail-sector PMI. Germany’s IFO index of business conditions and expectations is due, and that country also reports import prices, consumer prices, unemployment, and consumer confidence. France releases housing starts, business and consumer confidence, and personal consumer spending. The Netherlands, Italy and Belgium all release business sentiment. Belgium and Spain announce consumer prices. Italy releases CPI, wage, and PPI figures.
Sweden reports consumer and business confidence, GDP, retail sales, producer prices, business and consumer sentiment, unemployment, and housing loans. The Swiss index of leading economic indicators, trade balance, employment and index of consumption arrive as well, as does Norwegian retail sales.
Many emerging markets announce GDP: Thailand, South Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Poland, Mexico and India. Taiwan and South Korea report industrial production.
The New Zealand budget will be delivered, and that country’s trade figures and business sentiment are also scheduled. Australian construction, investment, home sales, private credit, and index of leading economic indicators arrive during the week. The quarterly Canadian current account, due Friday, will be in significant deficit.
Aside from the holidays, this week will be affected by month-end factors and marks the beginning of the unofficial summer season in currency trading.
Copyright 2009 Larry Greenberg. All rights reserved. No secondary distribution without express permission.
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