Market movers today
US industrial production, final euro area HICP December inflation figures and Chinese Q4 GDP data are the highlights of the data calendar later in the week.
Today, the Bank of England’s newest external member, Silvana Tenreyro, is due to speak about productivity growth in a first speech that could hold clues to her out look for interest rates, ahead of the UK’s inflation release tomorrow.
In Sweden, Valueguard house price indicators for December are due out , where we look for another decline (see next page).
Selected market news
In Japan, the Bank of Japan kept purchases unchanged. In addition, Governor Haruhiko Kuroda stated overnight that easing measures will stay in place until the inflation target has been met .
Late on Friday, the ECB’s Jens Weidmann stated that ‘as far as central bank interest rates in the euro area are concerned, however, the immediate risk of change is currently low. After all, the Governing Council has made it clear that interest rates will remain at their current levels for a longer period of time and well beyond the time horizon of net asset purchases…..a faster end to net asset purchases with a clearly communicated end-dat e would have been just ifiable’ and the full normalisation of monetary policy will therefore be a long path’, thus signalling that rate hikes are still a while away.
On Friday, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he was confident that an agreement would be struck to avoid government shutdown before the current short -term spending bill expires on 19 January – either with a long-term or short -term deal.
On Saturday, Iraq was supporting the call for OPEC oil production cuts to remain in place throughout 2018. There has been some speculation about whether OPEC would end cuts early following the recent price rally. In addition, the US oil rig count has started to rise again.
