Preview of key US data coming up - Nomura

Analysts at Nomura noted the forthcoming key US data releases coming up today in a preview.

Key Quotes:

"ADP private employment: Reflecting our forecast for private payrolls in the BLS employment report on Friday, we expect ADP to report an increase of 110k in private payrolls for March (Consensus: 210k). However, given that ADP did not show a material weather bias in February, there is upside risk to our ADP forecast.

Factory orders: According to the advance report on durable goods for February, new orders and shipments of core capital goods (non-defense excluding aircraft) rose solidly, pointing to continued growth in core equipment investment in Q1. However, incoming data suggest investment in autos and aerospace equipment was soft. We look for industrial activity to continue to grow robustly and investment in equipment to grow strongly in the coming quarters. We expect the final report on factory orders to reaffirm our outlook on equipment investment.

ISM non-manufacturing index: Various business surveys point to continued expansion in activity in the non-manufacturing sector in March, although some regional survey data moderated slightly. Reflecting these data, we forecast 59.7 for the March ISM nonmanufacturing index (Consensus: 59.0). Although February’s ISM non-manufacturing index fell slightly from the previous month, details of the survey point to continued momentum. In particular, the new orders index increased 2.1pp to 64.8, while the index for backlogged orders came in at 56.0, up 5.5pp from 50.5. The strong readings for these indicators suggest momentum continued in March. In addition, any comments from nonmanufacturing business respondents on trade tensions will be of interest. The March ISM manufacturing survey indicated that many industries expressed concerns over input prices and supply chains in response to the recent tariff announcement, although the majority of industries expressed continued business growth. Considering the recent changes to tax policies, we expect businesses to remain generally optimistic in the near term."