Week ahead: Fed, ECB & BoJ in action

Spain’s election results provide the backdrop for European equity markets at the start of the week before we get into a busy calendar of economic data releases, starting with PMI surveys on Monday. These updates tee up a huge week for central banks as the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Bank of Japan meet to set interest rates. It’s also a huge week for earnings on Wall Street with around one-third of Dow Jones industrial average components reporting, whilst megacap tech gets an outing with Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft delivering earnings updates.

Here are the week’s key events:

Monday

Europe wakes up to results from the Spanish elections and PMI surveys from Japan and Australia ahead of the major market-moving reports from the Eurozone, UK and US. Manufacturing in contraction, services bouncing along happily in expansion have been the stories this year for the world’s major economies. Earnings season takes a pause, so the focus is on the macro data ahead of the central bank meetings later in the week.

Tuesday

Bank of Japan core CPI numbers will be one to watch for JPY, while EUR traders will watch the German Ifo business climate survey. In the US the focus is on the Conference Board consumer confidence survey and Richmond manufacturing index. Earnings aplenty with some major Dow components and a couple of the megacap tech names in Microsoft and Alphabet reporting numbers.

Earnings: 3M (MMM), General Electric (GE), General Motors (GM), Spotify (SPOT), Verizon (VZ), Alphabet (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Snap (SNAP), Visa (V), Unilever (ULVR)

Wednesday

AUD will likely move on the latest Australian CPI inflation report, with the RBA’s August 1^st decision on a knife-edge after it paused in July. But the main focus is on the Fed with markets fully pricing a 25bps hike – the key for the market is on what comes next – is it one and done or will the Fed and chair Jay Powell seek to signal that it can do more and will probably need to lean against persistent core inflation for longer. Earnings come from Boeing, Meta and Coca-Cola.

Earnings: AT&T (T), Boeing (BA), Coca-Cola (KO), Meta Platforms (META), Lloyds (LLOY), Rio Tinto

Thursday

It’s over to the European Central Bank and its July meeting. Christine Lagarde pre-announced another 25bps hike a month ago, so the main focus is on the guidance around the September meeting. The hawkish head of the Dutch central bank, Klaas Knot, said monetary tightening after this meeting is far from guaranteed, indicating that the ECB may be about to pause is rate hiking cycle. Earnings come from Amazon, Ford and Intel.

Earnings: AbbVie (ABBV), Mastercard (MA), McDonald’s (MCD), Amazon (AMZN), Ford (F), Intel (INTC), Roku (ROKU), Anglo American (AAL), Drax (DRX), Segro (SGRO)

Friday

Tokyo core inflation tees up the Bank of Japan decision. So far, the new governor has been at pains to stress no action on changing yield curve control until inflation is more sustained. The Japanese yen remains sensitive to any hints about the BoJ altering course this year. Meanwhile attention will also fall on German preliminary CPI inflation and the US core PCE reading, the Fed’s preferred measure of underlying inflation.

Earnings: Rightmove (RMV), NatWest (NWG), Intertek (ITRK), AstraZeneca (AZN), Chevron (CVX), Exxon Mobil (XOM), Procter & Gamble (PG)