Market movers today
Today's data calendar is relatively light. France and Italy will release industrial production for January and provide important input on the direction of the overall euro area industrial production data to be released on Wednesday. We expect gains in industrial production a little bit ahead of consensus for France. In the euro area, the Sentix investor confidence for March will be released and should provide a first indication on the strength of March.
The euro group finance ministers will meet today in Brussels at 14:00 without an urgent agenda. It is possible that an exit strategy for Portugal could be discussed. Negotiations about a final agreement on a common resolution mechanism for failing banks in connection with the banking union are also likely to continue.
There are also a number of speeches from central bankers on the calendar today. Bank of France governor and ECB Governing Council member Christian Noyer is scheduled to speak twice today. The Fed's FOMC Charles Plosser, (voter, hawk) and Charles Evans (non-voter, dove) are also both due to speak.
The Bank of Japan will announce its decision from this week's monetary meeting early tomorrow morning before markets open in Europe. At its previous meeting in February, BoJ announced some minor easing measures and the data released since then has in general been better than expected, suggesting that the economy is relatively strong ahead of the planned consumption tax hike in April. Hence we think BoJ is very unlikely to announce any major easing measure in connection with this monetary meeting.
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