It’s a big week for Australia, with the RBA’s last policy meeting of the year on Tuesday, followed by the release of Q3 GDP, trade balance and retail sales data. In the US, there are two key sets of data which will likely dominate: labour market figures for November on Wednesday and Friday and ISM PMIs today and Wednesday. European Central Bank President Lagarde is due to speak today at 14.00.
Monday 2nd December
Eurozone: ECB President Lagarde to speak (14.00 London time). Lagarde has been calling for greater Eurozone fiscal spending which has so far fallen on death ears and the Euro has continued to trade sideways.
United States: ISM Manufacturing PMI (November). The index of manufacturing activity has been on a slide since summer 2018 and analysts forecast only a modest rebound in November to 49.2 from 48.3 in October. Note that despite a falling manufacturing PMI US GDP growth was broadly stable in Q3 at 2.1% qoq annualised.
Tuesday 3rd December
United Kingdom: British Retail Sales Consortium (BRC) retail sales (November). This data release is likely to play second fiddle to political considerations with general elections only 10 days away.
Australia: Current account balance (Q3).
Australia: Reserve Bank of Australia policy meeting. Macro data have been on the weak side recently but markets are pricing only 2bp of rate cuts for this meeting. Focus will be on the RBA’s willingness to deliver another rate cut in early Q1 2020.
Switzerland: CPI-inflation (November). Switzerland was in deflation (negative year-on-year CPI-inflation) in October and analysts forecast that headline CPI-inflation will remain negative in November at -0.3% yoy. The Swiss National Bank has however so far resisted the global trend of cutting interest rates.
Wednesday 4th December
Australia: GDP (Q3). This may be considered “old” data by now but it is noteworthy that in a world of slowing economic growth Australian GDP growth was stable at a decent 0.5% qoq in both Q1 and Q2. Analysts forecast a hatrick with GDP growth at 0.5% qoq in Q3.
United States: ADP labour market data (November). This non-official data release of private-sector employment figures is the precursor to official data out two days later.
United States: ISM non-manufacturing PMI (November). Economic activity in the service sector has fallen in the past year but held up better than manufacturing sector activity. It posted a decent rebound in October to 54.7 and analysts expect a broadly unchanged number in November.
Thursday 5th December
Australia: Trade balance (October). As has been the case in New Zealand, the trade balance has gradually improved in the past 18 months in Australia despite a backdrop of slowing global trade.
Australia: Retail sales (October). Consumer demand has held up reasonably well with the AUD-value of retail sales up 0.4% mom in August and 0.2% mom in September. The consensus forecast is that retail sales rose a further 0.3% mom in October.
Eurozone: Retail sales (October)
Friday 6th December
Eurozone: German industrial output (October)
United States: Labour market data (November). The US labour market has remained robust even if hourly wage growth has slowed from 3.4% yoy at the beginning of the year to about 3.0% yoy. The Dollar can be choppy in the run-up and immediate aftermath of this data release – with a lot of market focus on the headline non-farm payroll figure – but it then tends to settle over the weekend and the following week.
