Trump hours away from the Oval Office
And so a day that few thought would ever happen has arrived and in a little under 12 hours Donald J Trump will take the oath of office and be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. While news coverage will start at around 3pm GMT, he will take the oath and then deliver his inaugural address a little after 5pm. Perfect time to watch it from a suitable and well stocked, licensed establishment.
Can he stay on message?
Following another strong run of US data and subsequent greenback strength we have sat in a holding pattern of suspense. As we thought before Trump’s press conference last week the dollar can gain should further details of trade, infrastructure and spending plans be released. The fact that Trump is easily distracted on to matters of personal attack, rumour and suggestion does not change the likely stimulus; merely how it will be delivered. Today is not a press conference however, and as long as he stays on script and doesn’t start babbling about his hands, being a ‘germaphobe’ or Nazi Germany then we think the dollar will be fine.
Sunday trading for the pound and the dollar
Here in the UK, as much as the Sunday papers are important for additional rumour or detail on the basis of Brexit, Sunday’s papers in the US could be critical for the open of the US dollar. Trump has made it clear that work starts on his vision for a greater America on Monday and we expect that that will start to leak over the weekend.
On the topic of leaks and particularly Brexit, we expect this Sunday’s UK papers to take a tone of how the UK can succeed under a hard Brexit scenario and let the Supreme Court ruling on the ability of the government to use its Royal Prerogative to trigger Article 50 be damned. Labour will vote to trigger Article 50 and so will the Tories, so, unless the Supreme Court really throws a spanner in the works, the role of parliament is now largely diminished until the vote on the deal promised by May earlier this week. The Supreme Court judgement is due at 9.30am on Tuesday morning.
We love to shop…
Sterling can easily be boosted today by the retail sales report from December. News from retailers has been good with sales stronger and values higher. We expect that the December retail sales report may be a last hurrah for the UK consumer however as inflation starts to bite. We will be watching prices and the rate of consumer credit expansion very closely in 2017.
The Day Ahead
With the events in Washington to fixate the market’s psyche we feel there is little market action ahead of us in the session.