Economic calendar: US retail sales reading in the market spotlight

• Retail sales in China surprised positively, Asian indices on upward wave
• European index contracts open higher 
• Markets await PPI and retail sales readings from the US 

Today, the global stock market faces the prospect of potentially another successful session, passing in anticipation of US retail sales data 1:30 GMT. The readings will potentially shed more light on demand in the U.S. economy, and will also show whether the 'price' of lower inflation for markets will prove to be a significant deterioration in consumer activity. Other important readings in today's session will, of course, be PPI data, also released at 1:30 PM GMT We will also learn about wholesale sales data in Canada and the NY Fed's regional index reading. Traders in the oil market will pay attention to the EIA inventory readings, which will be announced at 15:30 GMT.

After the publication of readings from France, where the ILO unemployment rate turned out to be slightly higher than forecast and HICP inflation was in line with expectations, as well as UK inflation data, which turned out to be slightly lower than forecast, the next macro readings that investors will pay attention to will be inflation readings from Italy (9 AM GMT) and Eurozone industrial production data at 10 AM GMT. In Poland, on the other hand, investors are expecting a CPI inflation reading, which will be known at 9 AM GMT. The European Commission will also publish its own economic forecasts today.

Economic calendar

• HICP inflation (Italy): 1.9% forecast vs. 1.9% previously (9:00 AM GMT)
• CPI inflation (Poland) y/y: 6.5% forecast vs. 8.2% previously (0.2% vs. -0.4% previously) (09:00 AM GMT)
• Industrial production (Eurozone) y/y: -6.3% vs -5.1% previous (10:00 AM GMT)

Retail sales (US) m/m: -0.3% vs 0.7% previous (1:30 PM GMT)

• Core sales: -0.2% vs 0.6% previous

PPI (US): 1.9% forecast vs 2.2% previous (0.1% m/m vs 0.5% previous) (1:30 PM GMT)

• Core PPI (US): 2.7% forecast vs. 2.7% previous (0.3% m/n vs. 0.3% previous)

NY Fed: -3 forecast vs -4.6 previous (1:30 PM GMT)

Wholesale Sales (Canada): 0% vs 2.3% previously (1:30 PM GMT)

• Manufacturing sales: -0.1% vs 0.7% previously

Oil inventories by EIA (US): 2 million barrels forecast vs. 774,000 previously (3:30 PM GMT)

• Gasoline: 1.5 million barrels vs. 65k previously
• Distillates: -1.1 million barrels vs -790 thousand previously

Central bankers' speeches

• 15:30 - Fed Barr 

• 19:00 - BoE Haskel

• 21:30 - Fed Barkin

Results of Wall Street companies

• Target (TGT.US) - before the opening of the US session

• Advance Auto Parts (AAP.US) - before the opening of the US session

• ZIM Integrated Shipping (ZIM.US) - before the opening of the US session

• JD.com (JD.US) - before the opening of the US session

• Palo Alto Networks (PANW.US) - after the US session.

• Cisco Systems (CISC.US) - after the US session.