Economic calendar: DoE release and Carney’s testimony

Summary:

• US durable goods orders for May is the key reading for this afternoon
• Czech central bank is expected to leave rates unchanged
• DoE report on a change in US crude stockpiles
• Carney to testify before Parliament’s Treasury Committee

12:00 pm BST - Czech central bank rate decision: Over the course of the recent quarters the Czech central bank has delivered substantial monetary tightening lifting its 2-week repo rate to 2% from 0.05%. However, at its latest meeting in May it announced the end of monetary tightening, hence nobody expects any changes in rates by the year-end. Although inflation has lifted since the start of the year and approached sub-3%, it has still remained below the 3% inflation objective. Moreover, pressure from other central bank toward lower rates should strengthen the krone exchange rate which thereby could limit upside for price growth. 

1:30 pm BST - US durable goods orders for May: As we are nearing the key Fed meeting in July (still several weeks left though) each piece of macro data could be relevant in assessing the economic outlook there. However, it needs to be said that a key element in this puzzle seems to be an outcome of a Trump-Xi meeting planned for this Saturday in Japan during the G20 summit. In case of expectations ahead of today’s report we have a 0.2% MoM decline in terms of headline orders and a 0.1% MoM rise for core orders (excluding transportation). 

3:30 pm BST - DoE weekly report on US crude inventories: The API report, being a proxy for governmental reports released by the Department of Energy, showed a massive (over 7 mln barrels) increase in crude stocks last week. Therefore, the official Bloomberg consensus calling for a 2.8 million barrels decrease looks a bit conservative. On top of this, gasoline inventories are forecast to have falen 330k barrels while distillate inventories to have risen 170k barrels. 

Central bankers’ speeches:

• 10:00 am BST - ECB’s Mersch

• 10:15 am BST - BoE’s Carney, Cunliffe, Tenreyro and Saunders (Carney will be testifying before the Parliament’s Treasury Committee in London on the May inflation report)

• 4:30 pm BST - Fed’s Daly