In the European session, we don’t have much on the agenda other than a couple of low tier releases. In the American session though, we have the US CPI and the US Jobless Claims data. The focus remains on tariff negotiations as the data is old news right now, so I don’t expect the market to care too much about it.
The attention is on China as Trump hiked tariffs to 125% yesterday following another Chinese retaliation earlier in the day. Last Thursday, the Chinese retaliation news broke out around 10:00 GMT, while yesterday it did around 11:00 GMT. So, even if it shouldn’t be taken as a rule, that’s the time range when we could get something (or nothing).
12:30 GMT/08:30 ET – US March CPI
The US CPI Y/Y is expected at 2.6% vs. 2.8%
prior, while the M/M figure is seen at 0.1% vs. 0.2% prior. The Core CPI
Y/Y is expected at 3.0% vs. 3.1% prior, while the M/M reading is seen
at 0.3% vs. 0.2% prior.
Fed Chair Powell
spoke on Friday, and he said that they “don’t need to be in a hurry” to
cut rates, so the central bank will remain on the sidelines for now. He
also added that their “obligation is to keep long-term inflation
expectations well anchored” which suggests that they are in fact
constrained now.
The problem is if they cut
now, then inflation has real potential to increase again with a very
high risk of expectations de-anchoring. All the Fed members are now on this page, even Fed’s Goolsbee, who’s been a vocal dove for a long time.
12:30 GMT/08:30 ET – US Jobless Claims
The US Jobless Claims continue to be one of the
most important releases to follow every week as it’s a timelier
indicator on the state of the labour market.
Initial Claims remain inside the 200K-260K range created since 2022, while Continuing Claims made a new cycle high last week.
This week Initial Claims are expected at 223K vs. 219K prior, while Continuing Claims are seen at 1882K vs
