The notable highlight this week comes in the form of the latest monthly US nonfarm payroll report. Consensus is currently for a reading of 200k (Prev.
173k)
which would be in line with what is largely considered to be the Fed’s benchmark and thus signal continuing improvements in the US labour market. Focus will also be on the earnings components of the release given the strong pick-up seen in last month’s report, while the report will
continue to garner particular attention despite the Fed holding off on a rate hike at their last meeting. As a reminder, Fed’s Yellen highlighted that
global economic conditions were an issue, but also noted that slack remains in the labour market. As such, participants will be keeping a close eye on the
data and attempt to gauge whether the labour market has improved enough to justify a rate lift off this year, with Yellen suggesting that every meeting is
`in play` and an October rate hike is still possible.
Other notable events include, the latest set of Eurozone and German inflation data, UK GDP, Japanese industrial production & retail sales and
Chinese manufacturing PMI.
Considering recent rhetoric from the ECB, the European highlight could come in the form of the latest inflation data for September, out of both the
Eurozone and Germany. There have been suggestions in recent month that the ECB’s QE has not had a significant enough impact on inflation
and that the programme may be expanded in order to aid a pickup in inflation and bring the number closer to the central bank’s target of 2%. Last month’s Eurozone headline CPI fell to 0.1% and if this month sees another low CPI reading, there may well be an increase in calls for
the ECB to expand their current QE programme. However, it is worth noting that the headline data is influenced by oil prices, which remain soft at present
and as such may not accurately portray as much information about underlying inflation pressures.