{"id":143888,"date":"2019-03-18T11:40:26","date_gmt":"2019-03-18T15:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.countingpips.com\/?p=143888"},"modified":"2019-03-18T10:39:08","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T14:39:08","slug":"weekly-market-outlook-fomc-snb-and-boe-meetings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2019\/03\/weekly-market-outlook-fomc-snb-and-boe-meetings\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Market Outlook: FOMC, SNB And BoE Meetings"},"content":{"rendered":"
March 18, 2019<\/div>
\r\n<\/div><\/div>

By <\/strong>Orbex<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

A busy week for the financial markets is coming up.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a quick recap of the market-moving events we can expect.<\/p>\n

Central Banks<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The week ahead will see the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England holding their respective monetary policy meetings. Both are expected to\u00a0leave interest rates unchanged<\/b>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The\u00a0Swiss National Bank<\/strong>\u00a0is also due to hold its quarterly monetary policy meeting this week. We expect no changes here either, as the SNB will be maintaining the 3-month LIBOR rate at -0.75%.<\/p>\n

Brexit & The Eurozone<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Given that the UK parliament voted down PM May\u2019s Brexit deal once again, the uncertainty continues. This could see the BoE focusing more on the Brexit outcome rather\u00a0than monetary policy at the moment.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Flash\u00a0services and manufacturing PMI<\/strong>\u00a0reports will be coming out from the eurozone. These will give us a glimpse into the business activity for the month of March.<\/p>

\r\n
\r\n

Free Reports:<\/p><\/div>\r\n

\r\n

<\/a>\r\n\t Get Our Free Metatrader 4 Indicators<\/u><\/b><\/a> - Put Our Free MetaTrader 4 Custom Indicators on your charts when you join our Weekly Newsletter<\/p>

\r\n
\r\n
\r\n

<\/a>\r\n\t Get our Weekly Commitment of Traders Reports<\/u><\/b><\/a> - See where the biggest traders (Hedge Funds and Commercial Hedgers) are positioned in the futures markets on a weekly basis.<\/p>

\r\n<\/div>\r\n

\r\n
<\/div>\n

New Zealand Growth<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The fourth quarter GDP report from New Zealand will be coming out this Wednesday during the overnight trading session. Expectations show that the\u00a0quarterly GDP growth rate was around 0.3%<\/strong>during the three months ending December 2018. The data is expected to\u00a0show a slowdown\u00a0<\/strong>in New Zealand\u2019s economy through 2019 despite some temporary factors such as the energy sector.<\/p>\n

The slower pace of growth for the country stands in contrast to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand\u2019sforecast of a 0.8% increase.\u00a0<\/strong>The RBNZ estimated this figure during the February monetary policy report.<\/p>\n

In the September quarter, New Zealand\u2019s\u00a0GDP advanced 0.3%<\/strong>. On an annualized basis, New Zealand\u2019s\u00a0GDP for 2019 is expected to slow<\/strong>\u00a0to a pace of 2.7% compared to 3.1% during the third quarter of 2018.<\/p>\n

Besides the GDP data, the\u00a0fourth quarter current account deficit report<\/strong>\u00a0will be coming out a day earlier on Wednesday. Economists\u00a0forecast that the current account deficit will widen to about 3.9%\u00a0<\/strong>of the GDP, marking a\u00a0six-year high. This comes amid lower terms of trade and higher import volumes.<\/p>\n

FOMC Preview<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The U.S. Federal Reserve bank will be concluding its two-day\u00a0monetary policy meeting on Wednesday.<\/b>The central bank will be releasing its monetary policy statement along with\u00a0economic projections and the FOMC\u2019s dot plot on interest rates<\/strong>. The Fed Chair, Jerome Powell will also be holding a press conference later in the day.<\/p>\n

Expectations point to the fact that the Federal Reserve will be\u00a0keeping interest rates unchanged<\/strong>\u00a0at this week\u2019s meeting. The Fed funds rate currently stands at 2.50% \u2013 2.25%. The central bank\u00a0last hiked rates in December 2018<\/strong>\u00a0and the March meeting will mark a full quarter where interest rates were not changed.<\/p>\n

The decision to leave interest rates as they are comes as the latest data showed that consumer prices eased.<\/p>\n

Headline inflation<\/strong>\u00a0as of February\u00a0slowed<\/strong>\u00a0to a pace of 1.5% from 1.6% on an annualized basis.\u00a0Core inflation\u00a0<\/strong>was also\u00a0eased\u00a0<\/b>to a pace of 2.1% from 2.2% previously during the same period.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, economic reports point to the fact that the\u00a0US economy grew at a much slower pace compared to the fourth quarter of last year. According to the initial estimates, the\u00a0US GDP advanced 2.6%<\/strong>during the three months ending December 2018.<\/p>\n

However, data shows that this could be revised lower. The\u00a0first quarter GDP expectations are at below 2.0%<\/strong>\u00a0which would mark a slower pace of increase. As a result, Fed officials are\u00a0likely to remain very cautious\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>on forward guidance. Most likely, they\u2019ll state that rate hikes will be data dependent.<\/p>\n

Adding to the Fed\u2019s woes, the\u00a0February jobs report<\/a>\u00a0showed that the U.S. economy added only 20,000 jobs<\/strong>\u00a0during the month. This marked one of the slowest pace of job gains in recent years.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite wages rising and unemployment falling, the weaker pace of job gains has dented sentiment. As a result, investors will be looking to forward guidance and the Fed\u2019s projections on the economy.
\nBack in December, the\u00a0Fed signaled two rate hikes in 2019,<\/strong>\u00a0which will be closely watched for any changes to these projections.<\/p>\n

By <\/strong>Orbex<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Orbex A busy week for the financial markets is coming up.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a quick recap of the market-moving events we can expect. Central Banks The week ahead will see the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England holding their respective monetary policy meetings. Both are expected to\u00a0leave interest rates unchanged. The\u00a0Swiss National Bank\u00a0is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143888"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143897,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143888\/revisions\/143897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}