We don’t have any central bank meetings scheduled for this week, but we get the minutes from the latest RBA meeting, with investors eager to find out whether the case for a rate cut has increased or not. In the UK, following the EU’s decision to grant the UK another extension, Brexit could take the back seat, especially with UK MPs off for an Easter break. GBP-traders may pay some attention to UK data, with the employment report for February, the CPIs and retail sales, both for March, on this week’s agenda. We get inflation data from New Zealand, Canada and Japan as well, while from China, Q1 GDP is coming out.
Monday is a very light day, with no major economic indicators or events scheduled on the agenda. The only one worth mentioning is the New York Empire State Manufacturing index for April, which is expected to rise to 8.10 from 3.70.
On Tuesday, during the Asian morning, the RBA releases the minutes of its latest policy decision. At that meeting, the Bank kept interest rates unchanged as was broadly anticipated, but the accompanying statement had a softer tone than the previous one, despite the absence of any mention to a possible rate cut. Officials acknowledged the recent softness in economic growth and dropped the view that the central scenario is for the economy to grow by around 3% this year. Most importantly though, they did not repeat that unchanged rates would be consistent with sustainable growth and achieving the inflation target. Instead, they said that they will set future policy in order to reach those goals.
Back then, the message we got was that the current policy stance may not be consistent with sustainable growth and achieving the inflation target, and that a change could be...
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