First out in Sweden is household lending on Monday (at 09:30 CEST). We will be looking for signs that the reacceleration in house prices is also feeding through to credit growth. On Tuesday (at 09:30 CEST), we are due to receive trade balance, retail sales and producer prices. In our view, this is all interesting data but none of it is capable of shifting the outlook on its own. That said, we look for a continued improvement in most aggregates, even though we believe that import prices on consumer goods might take a step back due, inter alia, to a stronger SEK.
In Norway , the week's main event is the NAV unemployment figures for March. Given all the uncertainty about the LFS at the moment, we are in no doubt that the NAV's numbers currently paint the best picture of the labour market. We expect an unchanged jobless rate of 3.1% in March but with gross unemployment falling by 300-400 people m/m, signalling further tightening of the labour market.
The week also brings February retail sales, which we would tentatively put at 0.4% m/m. This would point to more or less unchanged consumption of goods in Q1 and so moderate growth in private consumption as a whole.
Finally, Norges Bank will tap the bond market on Wednesday. We expect yet another tap in the new 10Y bond. NGBs have performed well against bunds over the past couple of weeks supported by falling Nibor fixings, surprisingly low inflation in February and a soft Norges Bank.
In Denmark , a raft of interesting releases is scheduled. Thursday brings business sentiment data. Manufacturing confidence has been on the up recently, so we are excited to see which way the indicator points in March. Foreign portfolio investments and securities statistics for February land on Tuesday, while unemployment numbers round off the week on Friday. We expect the jobless rate to be unchanged from January, at 4.2%.
We see the recent move higher in EUR/DKK as temporary.
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