Market News Report - Markets should focus on Thursday’s economic data releases this week

The Middle East crisis continued to escalate in the first half of last week. But then the fears have diminished and investors were awaiting Friday’s monthly jobs data release. Will the coming week bring some interesting news events? Let’s take a look at the details.

The week behind

We’ve seen more volatility last week as financial markets have been reacting to disturbing news from Iran. The price of gold jumped to multi-year record high in the first half of the week and stocks corrected some of their recent run-up. But the markets reversed its course very quickly as investors shrugged off Iran fears. Then they awaited Friday’s U.S. monthly jobs data release. The numbers were worse than expected, so we saw some “risk-off” trading action again on Friday. Last week we underlined the economic data releases from Canada and it was worth watching those news, as the led to a jump in USD/CAD currency pair.

Let’s take a look at Friday’s gold price action. The market jumped at the moment of data release but then it quickly retraced the whole advance. However, it continued higher into the weekly close. So worse-than-expected NFP data triggered anintraday advance in gold price:

But what is the most likely short-term path for the price of gold in a few trading days after the monthly Nonfarm Payrolls number release? We’ve compiled the data since January of 2017, a 36-month-long period of time. The following chart shows that gold price was generally slightly gaining following the NFP release:

The week ahead

What about the coming week? Thursday’s U.S. Retail Sales number will probably be the most important data release this week. We will get China’s GDP data and the ECB releases on the same day. On Tuesday, the BOJ Governor Kuroda will speak and it will likely be closely watched by investors across all assets. The stock markets may focus on quarterly earnings releases from the U.S. banks. Let’s take a look at key highlights:

• The markets should focus on Thursday’s economic data releases this week: the Retail Sales number in U.S. and the GDP in China.

• On Thursday we will also get some important news from the Eurozone: the ECB Monetary Policy Meeting Accounts and a speech from ECB President Lagarde.

• The Earnings Season starts this week. We will mainly see quarterly earnings from banks in the coming days.

• The Bank of Japan Governor Kuroda will speak on Tuesday in the evening.

• There will also be series of economic data releases from the U.K. this week.

Investor's Perspective

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