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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