Investing.com – Here’s a preview of the top 3 things that could rock markets tomorrow
Yellen takes to the stage
Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen will be giving a speech titled “Inflation, Uncertainty, and Monetary Policy” at the National Association for Business Economics’ annual meeting on Tuesday.
The Fed chair is widely expected to offer little in the way of clues about the central's bank thinking on future monetary policy but market participants will likely parse Yellen's comments in the audience Q&A session that follows the speech.
At the press conference following the FOMC meeting last week, Yellen downplayed the significance of the weak core inflation data as the central bank signaled that an additional rate hike this year remained appropriate.
Gold prices rose sharply ahead of the speech in the wake of a surge in safe-haven demand following fresh threats from North Korea on Monday.
Bitcoin to surge above $4,000?
It’s been a week since Bitcoin attempted to mount a rally above $4,000 as traders consolidated positions, awaiting further clarity from China following the ban of local bitcoin exchanges.
Traders, however, remained optimistic about a post-China-ban bitcoin world, as the Chinese bitcoin exchange market only accounted for approximately 10-13% percent of global bitcoin trading activity so far this year.
Bitcoin rose to $3930.0, up 7.56% Monday, pairing its losses following fresh criticism from JP Morgan Boss Jamie Dimon on Friday.
U.S. macro data
The Commerce Department is to publish a report on new home sales for August at 10:00AM ET (1400GMT) on Tuesday. The data is expected to show an increase of 3.3% to 588,000 following a slump of 9.4% in June.
Fresh on the heels of housing data investors, Consumer confidence is expected to show a slight decline in September from the previous month.
Economists’ forecast the Conference Board’s consumer confidence gauge fell to 120 in September from 122.9 in August.
Consumer sentiment is a leading indicator of consumer spending, which plays a major role in overall economic activity.
The U.S. dollar index, rose by 0.54% to 92.46 on Monday, benefitting from a steep declined in EUR/USD following the German election which saw Angela Merkel’s Conservative Alliance slump share of the votes to its lowest since 1949.