Market movers today
This morning, Germany, Spain and Italy release their first estimates for February inflation. We expect the annual inflation rate in both Germany and Spain to be unchanged at -0.5% y/y but Italian inflation to rise to -0.2% y/y from -0.5% y/y.
There are several potentially interesting Fed speakers today. First, vice-chairman Bill Dudley (dove, voter) and Loretta Mester (hawk, non-voter) are participating at a conference discussing a new report called "new neutral", presented by various US banks in cooperation with several academics. This could give more insight into whether Dudley, who is at the core of the Fed, still believes lift-off in June is plausible. The other vice-chairman, Stanley Fischer (neutral, voter) is participating tonight in a panel discussion on central banks with large balance sheets, a conference in which ECB vice chairman Vitor Constancio also participates.
On the data front in the US, consumer confidence (Uni. of Michigan) for February is set to be released. There have been opposing forces in February as gasoline prices have increased slightly again, possibly weighing a bit, whereas the labour market is strong currently and stock markets have performed well too, underpinning confidence. We look for a very small rise from 93.6 to 94.1. If anything, there may be a small downside risk, as the Bloomberg weekly sentiment index published yesterday pointed to a decline.
We expect the first revision of US Q4 GDP data to be downward, from 2.6% q/q AR to 1.8% q/q AR.
Danish Q4 national accounts and a range of Norwegian and Swedish data are also due.
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