The Week Ahead: Eurozone inflation, Salesforce and Costco Earnings

The week ahead sees inflation data from Australia and the Eurozone watched closely as markets reprice expectations for how far central banks will take rates. There will also be a slew of manufacturing and services PMIs and earnings season on Wall Street effectively comes to a close with reports from Snowflake, Salesforce, Costco, Marvell, AMC Entertainment, Virgin Galactic and more.

Here are the week’s key events:

Monday

The week kicks off with German import price data following on from some rather hot month-on-month CPI inflation data last week. During the US session market attention shifts to the durable goods orders and pending home sales numbers. Japan’s preliminary industrial production data rounds out the session.

Earnings: Viatris (VTRS), Zoom Video Communications (ZM)

Tuesday

Consumer confidence in the US will be looked at for signs about the health of the world’s largest economy. A month the Conference Board said consumers’ assessment of present economic and labour market conditions improved at the start of 2023. “However, the Expectations Index retreated in January reflecting their concerns about the economy over the next six months. Consumers were less upbeat about the short-term outlook for job,” the CB reported. Ahead of this the latest French GDP and inflation data is due at the start of the European session.

Earnings: AMC Entertainment (AMC), HP (HPQ), Occidental Petroleum (OXY), Rivian Automotive (RIVN), Virgin Galactic (SPCE)

Wednesday

Australian inflation data will be assessed for the next step from the Reserve Bank of Australia after it hiked rates by 25bps in February after the CPI rose 7.8% year-on-year in the final quarter vs the forecast 7.6%. Minutes from the RBA meeting showed a pause in February was not an option and members discussed a 50bps hike. There is slate of European manufacturing PMIs to follow ahead of the important US ISM manufacturing survey. The January ISM report dropped to 47.4, down a full point from December, amid further contraction for new orders and output.

Earnings: NIO (NIO), Salesforce (CRM), Snowflake (SNOW)

Thursday

Eurozone inflation data is in focus as market participants try to judge how far the European Central Bank will go in raising rates. Inflation has been coming down, but markets continue to raise bets the ECB will hike rates to an all-time high. Swap markets last week began to price the ECB hitting 3.75% from 2.5% as investors see the ECB edging the Fed in terms of hawkishness this year having lagged behind last year. Inflation dropped to 8.5% in January from 9.2% in December.

Earnings: Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Zcaler (ZS), Costco (COST), Marvell (MRVL)

Friday

The week is rounded out with a batch of services PMIs for the Euro area, UK and US. Given the emergence of sticky services inflation, pricing components will be closely scrutinised. Resilient service sector activity in the US and Europe has underpinned markets pricing in higher interest rates and central banks keeping them there for longer. The US services PMI jumped to 55.2 in January after contracting in December. A separate flash composite PMI reading last week showed activity in the Eurozone rebounded sharply to a 9-month high in February.