Summary:

  • UK Construction PMI print to be released in the morning

  • Economists expect slowdown in Canadian GDP growth

  • Consumer sentiment measured by UoM heralded to show a little downside

With this week’s major events like Powell hearings in Congress already behind US traders will focus on the regular macro releases on Friday. In the morning data from the UK construction sector is due to release. In the afternoon figures concerning Canadian growth and US consumer sentiment are about to be released. Moreover, at 10:00 am BST Bank of England Governor Mark Carney will deliver speech inaugurating Scottish Economic Conference.

9:30 am BST – UK, Construction PMI for February. The UK construction sector has been struggling as of late. Latest construction PMI prints have been showing that the sector is still expanding yet the readings are getting closer to the value of 50 that is a borderline between expansion and recession area. Last month’s print missed forecasts heavily coming out at 50.2 against 52 expected. This time market consensus points for a reading of 50.5 what would be a slight upside.

1:30 pm BST – Canada, GDP for Q4. The Canadian economy is expanding at a robust pace. We have seen a little slowdown in Q3 as the economy grew at the pace of 0.4% in this quarter while in the previous one it was 1% (revised down from 1.1%). This time economists surveyed by Bloomberg point for another slowdown as they hint that the Canadian economy rose in December by 3.3% YoY against previous print of 3.5% and 0.1% MoM against 0.4%.

3:00 pm BST – US, University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment for February. One of the US soft indicators showing the sentiment among consumers in the economy. Soft indicators are often closely watched as they tend to be the first ones showing signs of the economic slowdown. However, following Tuesday’s CB consumer confidence print that have shown a huge beat one can assume that the consumers sentiment towards economy is positive. Market consensus points for a reading of 99.5 against last month’s 99.9.

Central bank speakers scheduled for today:

8:10 am BST – ECB’s Mersch

10:00 am BST – BoE Governor Carneylink do file download link

Canadian dollar has been underperforming against GBP recently. Will today’s data help GBPCAD distance further from 1.778 handle? Source: xStation5