Welcome to Monday's recap of what was interesting in the last trading week, and what we'll be focusing our attention on this week.
The CNB surprised the markets! Perhaps for the last time...
Read on to find out more!
At the end of the week, we got the latest global manufacturing PMI (Purchasing Managers' Index) data, which came in even worse than expected.
Over the past week we have been receiving a number of interesting figures, mostly relating to UK inflation and retail sales.
Consumer inflation increased by 0.7 %. This continues to confirm stronger price pressures. There is nothing here to distract the BOE from further and more persistent policy tightening.
On Wednesday and Friday, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell testified before the Economic Committee in Washington about the economic outlook and recent monetary policy actions.
The most interesting event of last week was the Czech National Bank's interest rate decision.
It surprisingly raised the rate by 125 basis points on Wednesday afternoon.
This week we turn our attention to Wednesday and Thursday's GDP data coming out of the US, UK and Canada.
We can expect an onslaught of speeches by central bank speakers throughout the week or so, who will be in the spotlight.
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It's Monday, and that means another regular recap of what happened last week.
Last week we saw a big surprise from the central banks!
Read on to keep up to date!
On Thursday, we turned our attention to the BOE's interest rate decision, which the central bank raised by 25 basis points as expected, marking the fifth rate hike in a row.
On Wednesday, the Fed raised rates by 75 basis points. Although it had predicted a 50 bp hike. During the week, the forecasts of major institutions (WSJ, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan) came out, which to some extent counted on a 75 bp increase. So it was not such a surprise.
Recording of the press conference:
At the end of the week, the Bank of Japan left rates unchanged, as expected.
The big surprise of the week was the Swiss National Bank (SNB) unexpectedly raising rates.
The current trading week will be much weaker. Still, it will bring some interesting data that will be worth mentioning.
The Reserve Bank of Australia will release its minutes of the monetary policy meeting on Tuesday.
The most important event we will focus on is Wednesday's CNB interest rate decision, which is expected to increase by 1 percentage point to 6.75 %.
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Welcome to our regular recap of the economic events that brought volatility to the markets last week.
This week will be very interesting too!
Read on to keep up to date!
The European Central Bank left key rates unchanged at its monetary policy meeting last week, as expected.
Services data are the weakest since February. The main impact is a decline in customer demand due to rising price inflation.
The US dollar will also be very interesting this week. We expect a 50 basis point rate hike on Thursday.
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) surprised the markets on Tuesday when it raised the base rate by 50bp to the current 0.85 %.
Rather, markets were expecting an increase of between 25bp and 40bp.
This week is sure to bring volatility to the markets thanks to the increased number of central bank meetings.
UK GDP and unemployment data will kick off the week.
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High inflation requires further action by central banks!
Welcome to our regular recap of the important events we followed last week.
Read on to keep up to date
During the last trading week, we followed the data from the euro area, which were mainly related to inflation, PMI and the labour market.
Inflation in the euro area reaches new highs. This is putting increasing pressure on the ECB to act to raise rates to bring inflation under control.
We also saw an interesting fundamental last week in the USA.
Wednesday's manufacturing PMI came in slightly above market expectations. Suppliers see light at the end of the tunnel for resumption of supply of (semiconductor) components. Supply appears to be easing in Q2 and Q3. Prices continue to rise, but at a slower pace. New orders grew at a faster pace.
The Japanese yen weakened significantly again last week. BOJ Governor Kuroda is reportedly expected to appear before the Diet this week to present a report on monetary policy.
We probably won't hear anything significantly different than which way the BOJ is going, but it will be good to watch.
The BOJ thinks there is no need to tighten monetary policy at this point.
On Tuesday, we turn our attention to the interest rate decision in Australia. The market's prediction is that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will raise the base rate for the second time since November 2010, by a base 25 basis points.
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Welcome to our regular Monday summary of economic events worth pondering.
RBNZ confirmed market expectations!
Last week the Eurozone offered us only the latest PMI data, which came in a bit worse than expected:
The UK also offered us the latest Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) figures last week. And in a very similar vein:
On Wednesday, the minutes of the last Fed meeting, which took place on 3. and 4 May. The minutes show that a majority of Fed members judged that another 50 basis point rate hike was likely to be appropriate at the next few meetings.
The current trading week will bring us plenty of interesting events and data to watch.
The week will start with a special European Council meeting to discuss the evolving situation in Ukraine, defence, energy and security. The week will also see data coming out of the Eurozone on the Consumer Price Index, unemployment and retail sales.
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Welcome to our regular review of the most important economic events from the last trading week.
Markets globally expect central banks to raise rates to bring inflation under control.
Read more to stay in the loop!
Just on Monday, the European Commission published its economic forecast for 2023, where we could read about a reduction in the economic growth forecast.
Later in the week, the ECB published the minutes of its monetary policy meeting, in which members expressed concern about high inflation.
The British pound strengthened slightly last week, thanks to intensifying global pressure on interest rate hikes and an improving labour market.
Earlier in the week, we watched a speech by FOMC member Williams, who confirmed that a 50 basis point hike is meaningless in the upcoming meetings.
After several record years, housing markets in many parts of Canada have cooled off sharply over the past two months.
On Tuesday we saw the minutes of the BOA meeting on monetary policy.
the meeting shows that the RBA will want to hike by 25 basis points at the next meeting.
The Australian economy was supported by household and business balance sheets and its resilience was particularly evident in the labour market.
Wednesday will be marked by interest rates in New Zealand. It is expected that the RBNZ will want to raise the base rate by 50 basis points This will certainly be encouraging for the NZD and could bring enough volatility to the New Zealand currency.
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Welcome to Monday's summary of the most important economic events.
Although last week was modest on fundamentals, the CNB moved the markets!
Read more to stay in the loop!
Christine Lagarde (ECB President) signalled a gradual rise in interest rates without a ceiling in her speech on Wednesday.
The UK offered us a bit more new data. We focused our attention mainly on UK GDP, which did not turn out to be particularly optimistic:
The US dollar has had a fairly eventful week, rising again.
At the beginning of the week, we were able to watch the speeches of the members of the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee - a body of the Fed), on which we focused our attention.
The domestic currency has had a really volatile week. Wednesday's appointment of Ales Michl as the new CNB Governor started a significant depreciation of the koruna.
The current trading week will definitely bring us a much bigger dose of interesting data from around the world.
On Tuesday, the RBA publishes the minutes of its monetary policy meeting, we get updates on the UK labour market and Eurozone GDP. The evening speech of the Fed chief - J. Powell - will definitely be interesting. At the end of the week we will also turn our attention to the Australian labour market.
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Welcome to our regular Monday recap of the most important events from the past week.
And that something was happening again! Central banks have added volatility to the market.
Read more to find out why.
The British pound experienced a slight decline after the Bank of England (BOE) raised rates by 25bp on Thursday, as expected. The current rate is thus the highest since February 2009 at 1 %.
The Fed also decided to raise interest rates on Wednesday, increasing them by 50 basis points. This is the second increase in a row.
The Canadian currency offered us only actual labour market data last week with a record low unemployment rate (5.2 %).
The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) made a "bold move" by raising rates higher than expected. That is, by 25 bp to the current level of 0.35 %. And more hikes are on the horizon.
We certainly won't see the same dose of economic data in this trading week that we experienced last week.
Despite this, we will turn our attention to a couple of numbers, which will mainly concern the current change in GDP in the UK and the US Consumer Price Index (CPI).
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It's Monday and that means we're bringing you our regular recap of what affected the markets last week.
The first half of the week was a bit weaker on fundamentals, but that changed on Wednesday when we started to get interesting numbers from Japan and the eurozone.
Read on to keep up to date!
The Bank of Japan (BOJ) left interest rates unchanged on Wednesday, as expected.
The Japanese currency has gone through a rough patch over the past 2 months, weakening significantly against other currencies.
The BOJ very confidently reiterated that it would keep monetary policy loose. They will not be tightening anytime soon. The bank says it is committed to achieving its 2% inflation target and will keep policy loose. However, there were concerns that the bank would falter precisely because of the political pressure of a falling yen.
BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said at his press conference that it is desirable for the currency to move steadily in line with economic fundamentals and that the current strong monetary easing needs to continue.
The Japanese Finance Minister believes that the current high volatility in the Japanese currency is undesirable and will take appropriate action if necessary.
Frankly, we are very curious how the BOJ will deal with this situation. The central bank hasn't raised rates since 2016 and so they remain in negative territory at -0.10 %. There is also some speculation in the markets about a JPY FX intervention. Central banks usually resort to intervention when conventional stimulus processes do not work to get the economy moving.
Our view is that the BOJ is very conservative in terms of moving rates. The JPY is considered a so-called safe haven in times of crisis due to the BOJ's monetary policy. Which we also saw at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We think that excessive rate hikes to boost the economy would slightly damage this prestige of the JPY.
On Wednesday, we could also see the actual quarterly GDP numbers in the US, which were not very good (current: - 1.4 % / previous: 6.9 %).
The euro area also brought interesting data at the end of the week:
Headline annual inflation may have matched estimates as it crept to a new record high, but the more worrying figure is that core inflation jumped above estimates in April.
This will continue to make the ECB very uncomfortable. So far, there are still little signs that inflation has cooled significantly.
Euro area growth was slightly slower than expected in Q1 as the Russia-Ukraine conflict weighed on activity since the end of February.
This week will be marked by central banks and their interest rates. On Tuesday, we will focus our attention mainly on the Australian currency, where rates are expected to rise to 0.25 %. Later on Tuesday evening, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand will release its Financial Stability Report, which will be accompanied by a press conference on Wednesday.
On Wednesday evening, we will also await the change in US interest rates, which are expected to rise by 50 basis points.
On Thursday, we will again see an interest rate decision from the UK. There is also the expectation of an increase here.
This week will definitely bring volatility to the markets, so be cautious and use SL. 😊
We wish you a successful start to the new week!
Sources
Welcome to our regular Monday recap of the most important economic events that affected the markets during the last trading week.
The start of last week was relatively modest for economic data. The second half of the week brought some interesting numbers, mostly from the euro area.
Read on to keep up to date!
The start of the week was kicked off by a statement from Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) Governor Adrian Orr, who mentioned that the current challenge for the RBNZ will be a "soft landing" over the next few years without a recession, where fiscal support will be needed.
On Tuesday morning, the Reserve Bank of Australia (BOA) released the minutes of its monetary policy meeting.
The meeting shows that we can expect another rate hike in June.
The Australian economy remains resilient and spending is growing. Wage growth has accelerated as well.
Members noted that higher petrol prices would lead to higher inflation in the coming quarters.
Financial conditions need to remain accommodating.
The full minutes can be found here:
https://www.rba.gov.au/monetary-policy/rba-board-minutes/2022/2022-04-05.html
At the end of the week, we saw results from Canadian retail sales (excluding autos), which were slightly weaker than last month (current: 2.1 %, previous: 2.9 %).
The Canadian economy has reopened after the January and February quarantine. Signs of March growth are positive. What's worrisome is new vehicle sales, down 11 % compared to 2/2021.
Last week also offered us some interesting Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) numbers from the euro area.
The details reveal that the surge in services comes as we see another reopening of the economy. Meanwhile, the downturn in manufacturing comes as supply chain disruptions continue to persist and we also see demand conditions cooling. The latter in particular is not an entirely positive sign.
Taking into account concerns about production conditions, weighed down by the Russia-Ukraine conflict and quarantine measures in China, this could lead to another challenging month despite these better figures.
The first half of this week will be rather modest for economic data. We will focus our attention on Thursday's Bank of Japan (BOJ) meeting, which will decide on the current interest rate settings. Later in the day, the latest US GDP numbers will be of interest.
We wish you a successful start to the new week!
Sources
English 
Czech 
Polish