Economic calendar: Semi-important data from Europe and the US

Summary:

• German IFO seen falling for the fourth consecutive week

• US housing market is showing weakness

• Inventories data may finally help oil push higher

Investors will be served few semi-important readings on Tuesday. German IFO indices reading will launch the day in the morning, followed by the US housing market data released in the early afternoon. Publication of API oil stockpiles estimates will round up the day.

9:00 am GMT - Germany, IFO business climate for December. After a brief jump in August the German IFO business climate index resumed downward move observed since the turn of the year. The situation is set to continue as the market consensus points for a drop from 102 pts seen in November to 101.8 pts in December. Note that Germany is Europe’s biggest economy therefore a deterioration of moods and a slowdown there may have disastrous implication for the whole EMU.

1:30 pm GMT - US, Housing market data for November. Markets were a bit shocked last month when homebuilder sentiment index unexpectedly plunged 8 pts to the lowest level since September 2016. Another steep decline was spotted yesterday when the index print for December was published. This does not bode well for the US housing market and the economy as a whole therefore investors will seek confirmation of this downbeat trend in today’s “hard” data. Housing starts in December are viewed to remain unchanged on MoM basis while building permits are expected to shrink 0.4% MoM.

9:40 pm GMT - API weekly crude oil inventories. Despite OPEC+ agreeing on a output curb for 2019, reaction on the oil market was fairly muted. We do not experience further declines of magnitude similar to the one we saw in October or December but prices are also reluctant to push higher. One reason behind this could be the fact that agreed production cut was near the lower bound of market expectations. The other reason could be another output records broken in Russia or the United States. When it comes to today’s API reading markets expect a minor decline of 1 mb.

Central bank speakers scheduled for today:

• 9:20 am GMT - Norges Bank Governor Olsen

EURUSD upheld its trading ranged market by the support zone above 1.13 handle and the 50-session moving average. The pair pulled back a notch below the aforementioned moving average in the morning. While today’s data releases are not typical market movers, they may trigger bigger moves in case a major deviation from expectations is spotted. Source: xStation5