It’s all about mid-tier releases from the eurozone’s top economies this week, and German reports might be in focus.
The Swiss economy also has a handful of noteworthy releases lined up.
Here are the potential catalysts on the docket:
Germany’s economic reports
- Retail sales (Jan. 5, 8:00 am GMT) to show 2.0% slide in spending after earlier 2.6% gain
- Unemployment change (Jan. 5, 9:55 am GMT) to indicate 10K increase in joblessness for November
- Preliminary CPI (Jan. 6, 1:00 am GMT) to print 0.6% rebound in price levels after earlier 0.8% drop
- Factory orders (Jan. 7, 8:00 am GMT) show 1.2% slide after previous 2.9% increase
- Industrial production (Jan. 8, 8:00 am GMT) to print 0.7% uptick after earlier 3.2% gain
Flash CPI readings (Jan. 7, 11:00 am GMT)
- Headline CPI to show 0.2% dip in December, adding to previous 0.3% decline
- Core CPI to post another 0.2% uptick for the same month
- Stronger than expected results might be bullish for the shared currency, as these could suggest that the ECB does not need to ease again anytime soon
Swiss economic data
- Manufacturing PMI (Jan. 4, 9:30 am GMT) to dip from 55.2 to 54.4 in December
- CPI (Jan. 5, 8:30 am GMT) to show flat reading in December after earlier 0.2% dip
- Unemployment rate (Jan. 7, 7:45 am GMT) to hold steady at 3.4%
- Retail sales (Jan. 7, 8:30 am GMT) to advance from 3.1% to 3.5% year-over-year
- SNB foreign currency reserves (Jan. 8, 9:00 am GMT) to rise from earlier 876 billion CHF level
Overall market sentiment
- These lower-yielding European currencies tend to benefit from risk-off flows
- Sentiment in the region has also improved thanks to the last-minute Brexit agreement, shoring up demand for the euro and franc
- However, fears of a new strain of the COVID-19 virus spreading among European nations could keep gains in check
Technical Snapshot
- Stochastic suggests that EUR/AUD and EUR/GBP are bullish in the oversold region
- The rest of the euro pairs are in neutral territory
- The euro has been most volatile against the Aussie over the past seven days, moving an average of 92 pips per day
- As for franc pairs, Stochastic shows that only CHF/JPY is bullish
- AUD/CHF, GBP/CHF and NZD/CHF could be in for some losses, based on this oscillator
This post first appeared on babypips.com
