This Week In Markets: 6th - 10th February 2023 (JPY Update & Powell Speech Preview)

Hello and welcome to this week ahead in global markets, and I'm going to jump straight in and start talking about the Japanese yen, which has slumped in early Monday trade after reports in local Nikkei press that Masayoshi Amemiya was approached by the government for the role of the Bank of Japan governor. He's currently the deputy governor. Now, what does this mean? Well, Well, people will front-run this thinking, well, what is his disposition and how aligned was he with Kuroda, who's going to be outgoing in April? And essentially they are one of the same. So in terms of how it's likely to be seen is the extension of the current incumbent's ultra-easy policy. Um, as I said, Kuroda's decade-long stint at the helm of the central bank comes to the end in April. The Nikkei has said the BOJ representative declined to comment. But here's just a quick look at what we're talking about. So this is a look at the Japanese yen spot price, and obviously jumped higher in dollar-yen after extreme dollar weakness was seen in the greenback following that really strong headline non-farm payrolls report we had at the end of last week. We then had the gap up here on yen weakness, so double whammy here for dollar-yen on two legs up, one on strength, the other on yen weakness with this latest news. Now it all comes on the back of the idea that markets are really setting themselves up for— Prime Minister Kishida is said to make an announcement on Kuroda's successor, and that could come as early as February in a setup for then his departure in April. The Bank of Japan shock decision that we had at the end of last year in December, they doubled their ceiling for 10-year yields, and that sent the yen and Japanese yields soaring at the time in a much more hawkish move. However, then if this news is correct, um, Amemiya accepts the position, foreign investors will need to readjust those expectations quite aggressively. And hence thus the way the yen has reacted here on that Nikkei report. No smoke without fire usually with these types of things. So we'll continue to keep a close eye on that. Be interested to see how dollar-yen trades as we get really up and running into the Western session in a few hours' time. One other thing, just briefly, just to touch on, uh, talking about Russia, the G7 and European Union member states have agreed to impose a cap of $100 per barrel on sales of Russian diesel to third countries as part of an effort to limit Moscow's revenues. The price cap mechanism is tied to an EU ban on seaborne imports of Russian refined fuel that kicks in, um, in Sun— on Sunday. Jumping straight in though to the week ahead, and it's fairly quiet in terms of the US front from an economic data perspective. Obviously last week we had Fed decision, we had non-farm payrolls, some really important pieces of information. So in terms of what we've got this week, jobless claims on Thursday may again indicate a tight labor market, and University of Michigan consumer confidence, that's coming out on Friday, and we'll be keeping a close eye on the update on consumers' expectation of future inflationary conditions. Remember, that report contains 1-year and 5-year outlooks. But one of the key things we'll look out for, just coming off that really strong data, is going to be central bank speakers from the Fed. There's about 5 or 6 that are already scheduled New York Fed President John Williams, the Atlanta Fed President Bostic, and we've also got Kashkari, and your main man Jerome Powell is also going to be giving a keynote speech at the Economic Club of Washington on Tuesday. And one of the main things, of course, that people are going to be looking at at this is if he fails to push back meaningfully against the market reaction. The implication would be that the Fed itself is relaxed with what's going on in the market. Obviously, stocks have been rallying, on this idea that we are at the moment, as far as market prices are concerned, factoring in rate cuts towards the end of the year. And if he doesn't push back on that Tuesday meeting, given the pretty decent bounce that we saw in the mid to latter part of last week, equities continuing the upward move, then that's likely to seal the deal for further pricing of expectations of future interest rate cuts to come from the Fed. So definitely it's going to be a key thing to look out for this week. And instead, when offered the opportunity in the press conference in the FOMC meeting a few days ago, He said, our focus is not on short-term moves. So that's the type of language you want to be keeping a close eye on. Meanwhile, taking a look elsewhere in North America, you might not recognize this guy, but this is the Governor Tiff Macklem of the Bank of Canada, and he's going to deliver one of his first speeches since the central bank there raised their interest rates for the 8th straight time, potentially the final time. And his remarks on Tuesday are likely to focus on how the Bank of Canada will interpret then the effects of what they've done so far, and thus forward guidance— what can we determine on their next course of action? There's two other big things coming out from the Bank of Canada this week. The day after, so midweek, the Bank of Canada is due to release their first ever minutes, something that's very common of course, like the Fed, the BOE, the ECB. Bank of Canada hasn't had this process before, but they're making this change on recommendations from the IMF. So they're going to be releasing their minutes, which could be interesting. And we've got CAD jobs data coming out on Friday. It's one of 3 key pieces of information, of course, ahead of then the next March decision we'll get from them. Meanwhile, let's just pivot over to mainland Europe. Things kick off in a fairly busy fashion here for Germany. German factory orders on Monday, you can see here, last time they came out, they dropped, they plunged 5.3%, and you can see here out of the last 12 months' readings, that was by far and away the worst. In fact, um, it was worse than market forecast, which we're looking for just 0.5% of a reading. I mean, expectations are here for a bounce back, positive, plus 3%, but nonetheless we'll be keeping a close eye on that. Industrial production is also due out the next day on Tuesday from Germany. Meanwhile, if we talk about the eurozone as a whole, From the ECB perspective, Vice President Luis de Guindos, the Executive Board member Schnabel, and central bank governors from Austria, Italy, and Spain all speak this week. And then the European Commission's quarterly forecasts are also coming out and starting to just keep an eye on. They previously did predict a recession in the euro region. However, officials may lift their projections after that stronger than expected performance that we've seen in the fourth quarter in terms of eurozone growth. Appearing not as bad as some may have originally expected. Sticking with that region, moving over to the UK on Friday, the UK economy is expected to have narrowly avoided a technical recession. That's a little bit kind of a moot point, but overall something that of course you'll be reading about in mainstream media, I'm sure, on Friday. Um, an artificial bounce activity after the Queen's funeral last September is is what's going to effectively have meant that, um, UK GDP would have shrunk by 0.3% between November and December. That, but that little decent bump that we had in October, meaning the fourth quarter overall will have stagnated more than gone into a technical recession at this point. And then the final things to have a quick look at, and we do have some interesting data coming out of China at the back end of the week, all focused on inflation. Obviously this is still a key metric that we're looking out for, particularly given the fact that China is going through this quite radical reopening shift over the last couple of weeks. Factory gate prices due there on Friday may show a fourth month of annual declines following drops in commodity costs. However, we also get on the same day CPI, so the consumer side of things, and they probably accelerated in January because of faster price increases in food and other categories. And how aggressively inflation rises there in China could have repercussions and ramifications for inflation elsewhere, further afield in the global economy. So something of course we'll be keeping a close eye on, given that that's the determining factor for a lot of central banks in the Western world's decision-making at this point in time. And then just taking a quick look, um, to wrap things off in that region, you've got the Reserve Bank of Australia. They are expected to hike. You can see here they're one of several global central banks that have meetings this week. they're anticipated to raise rates by 25 basis points. And then from an earnings perspective, no kind of major standout stocks. Obviously last week was a really big one, we had those mega-cap tech names all come out. There are 95 S&P 500 companies reporting this week. A couple of the highlights, we've got people like Pinterest, Activision Blizzard on Monday after market, and BP pre-market on Tuesday. Of course comes after record profits that we saw at Shell last week. Uber, CVS Health, Walt Disney all coming out Wednesday, PepsiCo Thursday. But I'll let you digest those in your own time. But that is it. So hopefully that was useful Sunday night just to get you all briefed and prepared for the week ahead. Make sure you like and subscribe to the channel, be much appreciated, and I'll see you next time. Take care.