Key US Macro Events In The Coming Week

After last week’s key event, the retail sales number, which the market discounted as being too unrealistic (and overly seasonally adjusted) after printing at a 13 month high and attempting to refute the reality observed by countless retailers, this week has a quiet start today with no data of note due out of Europe and just Empire manufacturing (which moments ago missed badly) and the NAHB housing market index of note in the US session this morning.

In Asia tomorrow the RBA meeting minutes may be of interest given the cut earlier this month, while Japan will also release industrial production data for May. In Europe we’ll get the April inflation docket for the UK (CPI/RPI/PPI) where headline consumer price inflation is expected to have risen +0.3% mom. We’ll also get the Euro area trade balance while in the US it’s a big day for data on Tuesday with April CPI (+0.4% mom headline expected, +0.2% mom at the core), housing starts and building permits as well as industrial and manufacturing production.

Moving to Wednesday, the big overnight data is the Q1 GDP report out of Japan, while later on in the morning we will get April property prices data for China. In Europe on Wednesday the main focus is on the Euro area CPI report (0.0% mom headline expected) while in the UK the latest employment report is due out. There’s no data out in the US on Wednesday but we will get the FOMC minutes from the April meeting.

Thursday’s focus in the morning is on the UK again where the April retail sales print is due, before we then get the ECB minutes around lunchtime which will be of interest. Datawise in the US on Thursday we’ve got the Chicago Fed national activity index, Philly Fed PMI, initial jobless claims and the Conference Board’s leading indicators.

It’s a quiet end to the week on Friday. In Europe the only data of note is the German PPI reading, while in the US existing home sales data is due out.

In terms of the Fedspeak this week we’ve got Kashkari scheduled to speak late this evening, followed by Williams, Lockhart and Kaplan tomorrow evening and Dudley on Thursday. Over at the ECB we will hear from Praet, Nouy and Costa all tomorrow. Finally, earnings season draws pretty much to a conclusion with just 23 S&P 500 companies set to report with some of the retailers the bigger interest including Target (TGT), Home Depot (HD), Lowe’s (LOW), Wal-Mart (WMT) and Staples (SPLS). In Europe we’ll hear form 27 Stoxx 600 companies including Vodafone (VOD) and Merck (MRK).