Market movers for the week ahead - Rabobank

This week’s data calendar certainly leaves a lot of room for other events, be it political, monetary or, indeed, of a super-human nature, according to Elwin de Groot, Head of Macro Strategy at Rabobank.

Key Quotes

“Although there is still a sense that Bannon’s removal from the White House may result in a less confrontational style on trade policy, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. A genuine rebound in the dollar will largely depend on whether the Trump administration can make quick progress with its economic policy agenda. It is also a question whether the new chief of staff, John Kelly, will be able to bring more discipline to the President’s twitter behaviour and public appearances. In that sense, tonight’s speech by the president on a new strategy on Afghanistan could be the first interesting test case. Will Mr. Trump stick to the script?”

“Expectations of a major announcement by Mr. Draghi at the annual Kanas City Fed in Jackson Hole on Friday have already been dashed with a recent Reuters article suggesting that Mr. Draghi will stick to ‘the script of the conference’ rather than preannounce an upcoming change in the ECB’s policy. Ms. Yellen, meanwhile, is set to speak about financial stability – an interesting thought given that the conference, which starts on Thursday.”

“The data calendar is very thin for the whole week. The exceptions to that are the German ZEW survey out on Tuesday (although this survey falls more in the category of “people taking pictures of people” rather than being a gauge of business sentiment). On Wednesday, Markit releases its preliminary August PMI for the Eurozone and the US, where a modest pullback is expected in the former, followed by US new home sales for July. UK Q3 GDP and US existing home sales are on the menu for Thursday. On Friday it gets a little bit more interesting again with the German IFO for August and US durable goods orders for July.”