The week ahead is slow with only a few major events lined up. The Reserve Bank of Australia and the U.S. Federal Reserve will be releasing the meeting minutes during this week which will provide further clues on the upcoming policy decisions. Among the economic indicators, Germany’s Ifo business climate data will be released during the week, and the UK’s ONS will be issuing fresh GDP revisions for the third quarter of 2016.
RBA meeting minutes
A slow week ahead will see investors focus on the meeting minutes from the Reserve Bank of Australia. The minutes being released will be from the RBA’s February meeting as investors look for cues from the central bank.
Commentary from the central bank after the February’s monetary policy meeting saw officials estimating Australia’s gross domestic product to expand at a pace of 3% on average in the years 2017 and 2018. This was in contrast to the central bank’s monetary policy statement released earlier in February which said that growth was expected to average around 2% during the first half of this year.
Besides the mixed signals on the GDP, the central bank also had similar views on inflation which increase the risks as officials turn more optimistic than the officially estimated projections. This could potentially make the RBA walk a thin line as rising inflation expectations and strength of the Australian dollar will weigh on the growth and inflation aspects.
The Recent release of economic indicators from Australia showed that the unemployment rate fell to 5.7% from 5.8% previously. However, it was a mixed bag with job gains seen coming from part-time jobs rather than full-time jobs, a concern for some, while for most, the jobs report for January was simply “better than expected.â€
FOMC meeting minutes
The U.S. Federal Reserve will be publishing the meeting minutes from the early February monetary policy meeting on Wednesday. The meeting minutes will offer investors insights into the deliberations among policy makers.
