Australia
Mon: Private sector credit (Aug)
Tue: Home prices (Sep), retail trade (Aug), building approvals (Aug)
Thu: Trade balance (Aug), New vehicle sales (Aug)
Fri: Lending indicators (Aug), Household spending (Aug)
International
Mon: China – PMI
US – US Fed chair speaks
Tue: US – Job openings (Aug), construction spending (Aug), ISM manufacturing (Sep)
EU – CPI (Sep)
Wed: US – ADP employment (Sep)
Thu: US – Factory orders (Aug), ISM services
Fri: US – Non-farm payrolls
There are a few key bits of data to drop this week, but perhaps none more important than the August retail sales figures.
“All focus (will be) on the extent to which households have started to spend the extra cash flow generated from recent tax cuts and government subsidies,” NAB’s head of market economics Tapas Strickland said in note this morning.
“Retail sales (Tuesday) and deposit data (Monday) will be watched closely.”
July’s sales were subdued despite being the first month of the Stage 3 tax cuts.
August is forecast to pick-up (around 0.5%) thanks to tax cuts but also Fathers’ Day falling on September 1.
Building approvals, also out on Tuesday, are tipped to have a sharp fall following July’s outsized 32% increase in apartment approvals.
Overall approvals are running well below the long-term trend.
CoreLogic’s home price series (Tuesday) may again show a patchy performance across the nation with strong sales in Perth and Adelaide.
Data on lending is out on Friday and the forecast is for a modest pullback in property loans in August after a big investor driven jump in July.
The trade balance (Thursday) is expected to have widened slightly is August to $6.3 billion, largely thanks to a stronger dollar, although commodity prices generally fell, so it could either way.
The key overseas data will be Friday’s non-farm payrolls and unemployment figures in the US.
Payrolls are forecast to have grown by160,000 and unemployment should stay around 4.2% — solid numbers, but no so good as to derail the Fed’s rate cutting trajectory.