Economic Calendar - 3 May 2010

Here's the Economic Calendar for the week commencing the 3rd of May 2010. This week there's a few PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) figures out from the US, Canada, China, and the UK; which will all provide a good insight into where the manufacturing (and depending on the release, services) sector is performing - and more importantly, how some of the leading indicators are shaping up. Also, on the monetary policy front there's interest rate decisions due from the ECB, and RBA, and speaking of policy, the UK is set to have its election this week. And of course another big data point this week will be the unemployment figures, with non-farm payrolls in the US, as well as an employment update from Canada, and New Zealand.

(More commentary follows the table)

Starting off with the PMIs, China has already kicked the week off early, announcing its official CFLP PMI at 55.7 vs previous 55.1 (and 53.5 this time last year), the HSBC PMI will probably confirm this general level when it is released this week. In the US the ISM PMI is forecast to come in at 59.8 vs previous 59.6, thus the market is expecting basically unchanged results for the US; even so the more interesting aspect will be any changes in the underlying component indices - we'll be looking closely at this. The US also has the non-manufacturing ISM composite index out this week which will also provide some interesting clues as to the form of the US economic recovery.

On the monetary policy front Australia's RBA will announce its interest rate decision as well as issuing its monetary policy statement (this will be a useful resource on the Aussie economy), in terms of the decision at this point it is a case of it could go either way. They have already tightened 5 times (125bps) on this round of tightening and have made mention about being near to neutral rates; so this will be one to watch. As for the ECB in Europe, it's still a case of no change now or in the near term, but it will be interesting to see if any of the Greece stuff works its way in to the tone of the announcement or even if they take any measures; and as always the press release will be a good brief update on the state of the EU economic environment.

The other main data points of interest out this week are in the jobs space. The US will announce the April non-farm payrolls figure on Friday and is expected to show another month of increase as the recovery begins to take hold (at least in the short term), requiring a normalization of staffing; but also there's a bit of census hiring in there as the US undertakes its 10-yearly census. There's also jobs data out of Canada on the same day for April, with another increase also expected. Meanwhile in New Zealand the Q1 employment figures are expected to show little change, with the consensus saying no change in the 7.3% jobless rate, but as the recovery is slowly starting to take hold in New Zealand it will be important to look at the detail - especially in the number of persons employed.

So as always, have a great week, watch out for surprises, and stay tuned for updates...

Sources
DailyFX www.dailyfx.com/calendar
Forex Pros www.forexpros.com/economic-calendar/
Forex Factory www.forexfactory.com/calendar.php
Bloomberg www.bloomberg.com
+various statistics websites and central bank websites for verification

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