Weekly Outlook

The US markets will be closed on Monday (16 Jan) for Martin Luther King Day holiday. Despite the holiday-shortened week, it will be a busy week in the US on the political front as we will have Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration ceremony on 20 January (Fri). On the international front, world political & business leaders will congregate in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland this week, for the 47th World Economic Forum (17-20 Jan) to discuss global economic issues and current affairs. There will be many senior Fed Reserve officials speaking in public forums this week including FOMC Chair Janet Yellen (18 and 19 Jan), New York Fed President, William Dudley (permanent voter in FOMC) (17 Jan), and Minneapolis Fed President, Neel Kashkari (voter in 2017 FOMC) (18 Jan). There will two monetary policy decisions from G7 central banks this week starting with the Bank of Canada (BOC) on Wednesday (18 Jan) and the more widely watched European Central Bank (ECB) on Thursday (19 Jan). The US economic calendar is well filled this week with the key data being for the December CPI (18 Jan) & various housing market data (19 Jan). It will be another busy week for the US earnings report calendar with the focus still on US big banks such as Morgan Stanley (17), Goldman Sachs (18), Citigroup (18) and Bank of NY Mellon (19) while we also have Netflix (19), American Express (20) and General Electric (20). The key event for UK will be the long-awaited speech by UK PM Theresa May on Tuesday (17 Jan) where she will lay out her Brexit vision.