David Wagner, Global FX Strategist at Nomura, outlines this week's headline events, with the FOMC minutes (Wednesday 19:00 GMT), RBA (Tuesday 05:30 GMT) and China FX reserves on Thursday, the main releases.
Key Quotes
"It will be relatively light on the data front for the U.S. next week, where the minutes of from the March 15-16 FOMC meeting will likely be the focus. While the FOMC did not change its interest rate targets in its last meeting, it did signal that it expects to raise rates more slowly than its previous forecast implied."
"The minutes should give us an insight into how the various participants assessed the balance of risks at the time of the FOMC meeting and the reasoning behind the lowering path of policy expectations."
"We will also be tracking discussions on realized inflation, inflation expectations and the outlook for inflation. On the trade balance, based on the advance report, our economists forecast that the trade balance widened to -$46.8bn in February from -$45.7bn in January."
"In Europe, a number of ECB speakers are likely to be the focus next week alongside the ECB account of the policy meeting."
"Continuing on the central bank front, the RBA holds its policy meeting on Tuesday. The AUD moved higher on the back of recent remarks by RBA’s Governor at the recent ASIC Annual Forum. We suspect that market participants might have been looking for a more aggressive expression of concern regarding the currency. We continue to forecast a 25bp rate cut in May; however, it seems increasingly likely that this will require a good CPI print on 27 April"
"In terms of China’s FX reserves, we believe that headline FX reserves fell by USD10bn to USD3,192bn in March, although after adjusting for FX and coupon effects, we estimate a fall of around USD62bn, from USD48bn in February"
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