Calendar Week 50 – 2021
A huge week of data as we run into the Christmas break. We will have announcements from a number of Central Banks with Thursday bringing us the FOMC, SNB, UK and EU followed by the BOJ on Friday. Whilst none are expected to increase rates, all of them have some form of loose monetary policy (either via currency intervention or quantitative easing) that could possibly be tightened.
The key one, and most likely to taper, will be the US Fed early Thursday morning at the FOMC meeting and the press conference following. The Fed has been caught behind the curve, again, with the official inflation spiking to over 7% (whilst real inflation is likely to be much much higher) so Powell will be forced to taper their QE purchases. Market has priced in a full 1% hike in rates within 6 months and a further 1% by this time next year, Jerome needs to catch up.
Elsewhere we also have key data points such as inflation from UK and Canada on Wednesday. Employment numbers from UK (Tues) and Australia (Thur) should also add interest and volatility this week. As will Chinese retail sales and industrial production figures on Wednesday.
So a fun week of data to research and understand that will setup some driving sentiment on price action, giving us trends to jump onto or bail out of that should last into the new year and first half of January.
