RBA, BOE and FOMC Meeting Minutes in the Spotlight
Sunday, May 18th, 2008Although this week will be slightly quieter than last, RBA, BOE and FOMC Meeting Minutes promise to take the economic centre stage.
The RBA Meeting Minutes will be the first high volatility event of the week, 02:30 BST on Tuesday 20th. Australian Interest Rates currently stand at 7.25% with no speculation of any immanent cuts.
Both the BOE Monetary Policy Committee and the Federal Open Market Committee Meeting Minutes will be released this Wednesday, May 21st. The BOE will come first, at 09:30 London time with the Fed following at 19:00 BST. As you might expect, these events will draw heavy interest from traders and economists with high market volatility expected. The markets are firmly focused on whether either central bank sees the need for further near term interest rate cuts.
Specifically, traders will watch the MPC Member vote split from the last meeting. The decision was taken to keep the rate on hold at 5.00% and the weight of the majority decision will be watched very closely for clues to the pace and direction of future rate moves.
While the FOMC does not reveal any vote casting it does publish a detailed summary of the interest rate meeting. Traders will closely scrutinize this commentary for clues to future rate moves. At present the popular market opinion is that the US will leave rates on hold in the near term.
Prior to the data landing on Wednesday we will see US PPI and Core PPI. They will hit the wire on Tuesday at 13:30 London time, 08:30 EST. The raw Producer Price Index carries more weight than the Core release. Economists are expecting 0.4% MoM for the PPI and 0.2% for the Core reading.
Later in the week we will see more high-volatility events from the US and UK. On Friday we will see the UK GDP Second Estimate which is expected to come in unchanged at 0.4%. This will be followed at 15:00 BST by US Existing Home Sales. Following a modest but unexpected increase to 5.03 million units in the March announcement, economists are expecting a second straight monthly decline to 4.86 million.
Further high volatility events this week are as follows:
BOJ Press Conference following the BOJ Interest Announcement - Tuesday am
Swiss PPI MoM - Tuesday 08:15
German ZEW Economic Sentimant - Tuesday 10:00
German Ifo Business Climate Index - Wednesday 09:00
Canadian Core CPI - Wednesday 12:00
UK Retail Sales - Thursday 09:30
Canadian Core Retail Sales - Thursday 13:30
The trading week is slightly shorter than normal in Canada (Victoria Day, Monday 19th) and Germany (Corpus Christi, Thursday 22nd) with lighter volume and volatility expected during these trading sessions. For more info please see our 2008 market holiday calendar.
The Passion-Trading visual analysis and historical data tool will support the following releases this week:
US PPI MoM
BOE MPC Meeting Minutes
Canadian Core CPI MoM
US Existing Home Sales
For details on the scheduled economic speeches you can check out this week’s economic comment calendar.
