Weekly Reports | Jun 14 2013
For a more comprehensive preview of next week's events, please refer to "The Monday Report", published each Monday morning. For all economic data release dates, ex-div dates and times and other relevant information, please refer to the FNArena Calendar.
By Greg Peel
Next Wednesday night the Fed will provide a fresh monetary policy statement and deliver a quarterly update of economic forecasts, and Ben Bernanke will hold one of his scheduled quarterly press conferences. The timing of the conference is fortunate, because the world would very much like to know if the US central bank intends to start tapering off QE or not.
That’s about all that matters next week. I could end this report right here.
As to whether global markets go quiet next week ahead of the Fed release is anyone’s guess, given speculation one way or the other has continued to drive global market madness this week. Once again the fate of mankind is held in the balance of the Fed’s funny money. It’s become a very tiresome story.
Data releases will nevertheless continue next week, and it will be a busy week in the US. Tonight sees industrial production and the PPI and next week brings the CPI, housing market sentiment, housing starts, existing home sales, the leading index, and the Empire State and Philly Fed activity indices. On Friday it’s the quadruple witching expiry of equity derivatives, which can often cause added volatility.
Thursday will also see a flash estimate of the US June manufacturing PMI, which will be matched by a eurozone equivalent and HSBC’s China PMI. Chinese property prices will be revealed, and eurozone releases will include unemployment, trade, construction and the ZEW investor sentiment survey.
Japan’s May trade balance will be released into the mayhem that is the Japanese market, while New Zealand will report its March quarter GDP. Kiwis are never in a rush.
The highlight in Australia next week will be the release of the minutes of the June RBA meeting, which economists will hope provides clues as to whether the central bank might cut in July or not. The June quarter RBA bulletin is also due, as is Westpac’s June quarter consumer confidence summary.
Australia will also see a bit of witching next week when the SPI futures and physical index options expire on Thursday.
But it will be Wednesday night when, hopefully, we’ll know where we all stand.
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