Global Economy Week Ahead: U.S. Housing Starts, Brazil Rate Decision, Eurozone PMI
June 17 2018 - 03:29PM
Dow Jones News
By WSJ Staff
In the week ahead, the U.S. will see data on housing starts and
home sales, while Brazil's central bank makes an interest-rate
decision and manufacturing numbers from Europe are released.
TUESDAY: The U.S. Commerce Department releases May
housing-starts data. In April, housing starts fell, dragged down by
weakness in multifamily building. Economists surveyed by The Wall
Street Journal expect housing starts rose to a 1.31 million
seasonally adjusted annual rate in May, while forecasting permits
grew to a 1.36 million rate.
WEDNESDAY: The National Association of Realtors releases data on
May existing-home sales. Sales of previously owned U.S. homes
declined in April, signaling that a run-up in prices and limited
inventory may be damping momentum in home purchases this spring.
Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal forecast sales
increased 1.6% in May.
Brazil's central bank decides on interest rates at 5 p.m. EDT,
as it faces market pressure to raise its benchmark Selic rate from
its 6.5% historic low to fence off a sharp weakening in the local
currency versus the dollar. The Brazilian real has lost 11% of its
dollar value this year. However, central bank President Ilan
Goldfajn has said he won't use the Selic to control the exchange
rate, but only to fight inflation, which remains below target.
FRIDAY: Japan will get its consumer-price index reading for May
(release time is Thursday evening in the U.S.). The country's core
CPI, which excludes fresh food prices, rose 0.7% from a year
earlier in April, decelerating for two consecutive months and
remaining far from the Bank of Japan's 2% inflation target. Such
low inflation has led the central bank to buck the global trend of
monetary policy tightening: On Friday, it decided to continue with
its ultra-easy policy.
As the second quarter draws to a close, there are few signs of a
rebound in eurozone economic growth after a slowdown in the first
month of the year that policy makers appear to regard as temporary.
Further evidence of the durability of what European Central Bank
President Mario Draghi has called "a soft patch" is likely to come
in the form of IHS Markit's composite purchasing managers index, a
measure of activity in the manufacturing and services sectors.
Economists expect that to fall to 53.7 in June from 54.1 in
May.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 17, 2018 15:14 ET (19:14 GMT)
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