– Europe experience drop in unemployment, Germany retail sales picked up to 1.3% and personal consumption in France surged. However, broad CPI measure fell slightly from 0.5% to 0.4% mainly due to food and energy factors as core release stays unchanged at 0.8%
– in US, weekly jobless claims stays mostly unchanged around 300k (initial) and 2,5M (continuous) claims. Early comments in reaction to this data say, that labor market is consistently improving.
– meanwhile Canadian GDP rose robust 0.4% m/m surprising even most optimistic investors. Such growth is also a good signal regarding US economy which Canadian econ is strictly tied with.
Today we have bunch of manufacturing PMI readings. China and Japan had modest releases very close to expectations. But today also EMU, UK and US release their PMIs. Expectations are near previous readings except US, where mfg PMI is expected 0.8 pts higher than before.
Today is the first Friday of the month, therefore BLS is releasing its labor report with headline NFP reading. Previously released labor related data shows good chance for moderately positive NFP / unemployment rate figures. What adds to this outlook is Conference Board consumer report (Tuesday) which came 5 points better (90.9) than previous one (85.5) and it contains job opportunities in it.
And there is another important release today, Personal Consumption based inflation measure (PCE) which appears pretty often in Fed officials’ speeches. No way to ignore it, especially if it will confirm latest CPI pickup – then we’ll be dealing with new situation where Janet Yellen will have tough time to talk the fact of CPI surge down as a statistical noise.
To sum up, we have tough combo of important macro data today. We advise you to pick trading instruments wisely. Traders with weaker guts should consider starting their weekend right today.
