Ok, it’s Sunday evening at HR, and you know what that means.
That means it’s time for us to remind you that tomorrow will be Monday, so you need to get “jacked to the tits” right now to get a jump on things.
The schedule isn’t as jam-packed as it was last week, but there are some things to watch, notably a Fed meeting.
Of course nothing will come of it, although, as former FX trader Richard Breslow wrote a few days ago, we might all be better off if the committee decided to do something everyone knows they won’t do. Here are a couple of bullet points from Goldman:
- We do not expect any policy changes at the July FOMC meeting and expect only limited changes to the post-meeting statement. The statement is likely to upgrade the description of job growth, but might also recognize that inflation has declined further. We think the statement is also likely to acknowledge that the balance sheet announcement is now closer at hand.
- Looking ahead, we continue to expect the FOMC to announce the start of balance sheet normalization in September. We see a 5% probability that the next rate hike will come in September, a 5% probability that it will come in November, and a 50% probability that it will come in December, for a 60% cumulative probability of at least three hikes this year.
And here’s BofAML:
- The FOMC is unlikely to significantly change their message at the upcoming meeting. With no Summary of Economic Projections or Press Conference, focus will be on the statement, where we expect the FOMC to tweak the language to emphasize the recent inflation weakness and to double down on balance sheet normalization.
Right.
We’ll also get Q2 GDP, which could be more consequential especially to the extent it reinforces the readily apparent discrepancy between the signals being sent by the labor market and the signals being sent by the incoming inflation data.
Also on the docket is Australia CPI and a speech from RBA Governor Lowe, both of which will be watched closely in the wake of last week’s action in the aussie, which moved sharply higher on ostensibly hawkish RBA minutes, only to be jawboned lower on Friday by Deputy Governor Guy Debelle, in what amounted to a mad scramble to walk back the FX equivalent of a hike.
There’s also UK GDP, a print that comes amid continued speculation about whether there’s enough of a data-dependent rationale to warrant a BoE hike. Recall that the pound moved off a 10-month high early last week after a disappointing read on June inflation. “We expect the UK GDP data likely will show that momentum remains bleak, and we expect Q2 2017 GDP to grow at 0.2% q/q, unchanged from Q1 2017,” Barclays wrote on Sunday morning, adding that “amid headline risk from Brexit negotiations and political uncertainty, weak economic data are likely to moderate expectations for upcoming hawkish monetary policy and weigh on GBP.”
There’s considerable headline risk in the US, something markets have grown accustomed to, but as we saw last week with the news that the Mueller investigation is expanding, there’s the potential for turmoil – even if any vol. spike proves characteristically fleeting.
Jared Kushner with speak with the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday and with Senate Intelligence Committee investigators behind closed doors tomorrow.
“When Jared Kushner sits down on Monday with staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he is expected to be questioned about his relationships with Russian officials, including his participation in a meeting last year with a Kremlin-linked lawyer,” NBC reminds you.
“As Mr. Kushner has been saying since March, he has been and is prepared to voluntarily cooperate and provide whatever information he has on the investigations to Congress,” Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement.
The dollar is on the back foot as positioning is now the most bearish since 2013 amid jitters about whether the Trump administration’s policy agenda is dead in the water.
Here’s a full calendar from BofAML:
Of course whether or not any of the above matters is contingent upon Donald Trump not pushing the red button between now and midnight, or, as Bill Murray famously put it as Phil Connors, “Well what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn’t one today“…
****************
