EUROPEAN SESSION
In the European session, we have the UK employment report and the SNB and BoE rate decisions.
The UK employment report is expected to show 75K jobs added in the three months to April with the unemployment rate to remain unchanged at 5.0%. The last report showed the unemployment rate ticking higher with a significant drop in payrolls for April, although the ONS noted that the early April estimate was more uncertain because of the change of tax year.
The SNB is expected to keep the policy rate unchanged at 0%. There shouldn’t be anything new as the SNB repeated countless times that the bar for negative rates remains very high. The central bank will likely continue to reiterate the “increased willingness to intervene in FX” when necessary.
The BoE is expected to hold the Bank Rate steady at 3.75% with a 7-2 vote split. The recent economic data has been benign with headline and core inflation metrics coming in below estimates and the labour market data continuing to show weakness. The most important development though was the end of the US-Iran war and the quick drop in oil prices with Brent now trading below 80/bbl, which is way below the 108/bbl average in BoE’s optimistic forecast. The central bank will likely maintain optionality in the statement but I think there’s a good chance of the vote split to err on the “dovish” side with an unanimous hold.
AMERICAN SESSION
In the American session, we only have the US Jobless Claims data. Initial Claims are expected at 225K vs 229K prior, while Continuing Claims are seen at 1789K vs 1795K prior. The US jobs data has been solid for months and the end of the war can only improve things further on positive business and consumer sentiment. I don’t expect much reaction to the data unless we get big deviations.
CENTRAL BANK SPEAKERS
07:00 GMT/03:00 ET – ECB’s Nagel (hawkish – voter)07:00 GMT/03:00 ET – ECB’s Kocher (neutral – voter)12:00 GMT/08:00 ET – ECB’s Cipollone (neutral – voter)12:15 GMT/08:15 ET – ECB’s Lane (neutral – voter)17:00 GMT/13:00 ET – ECB’s Escriva (neutral – voter)
This article was written by Giuseppe Dellamotta at investinglive.com.