Foreign exchange markets: Tuesday round-up

There’s a lot happening in the foreign exchange markets today (Tuesday) and across the rest of the week.

The main events will begin at lunchtime when the US Redbook index, which measures sales growth in the country’s shops, will be released at 12.55pm GMT covering the dates around August 2nd. Year on year, this was last recorded at 4.5%.

The next big event will be a job openings metric for June, which will be out at 2pm GMT. This was last recorded at 7,323,000 and is expected to change to 7,317,000.

Japanese foreign reserves level for July will be out at 11.50pm GMT.

The Bank of Japan’s summary of opinions, which is due to show what the Bank of Japan discussed and debated during its most recent rate-setting meeting, will be out at 11.50pm GMT too.

Looking ahead to Wednesday, there’ll be an interest rate decision from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand at 2am GMT. The bank is widely expected to take a dovish stance when it makes its decision, and to cut rates from 1.5% to 1.25%.

French trade balance data is expected at 6.45am GMT. This will be closely followed by some insight into China’s foreign exchange reserves for the month of July, which will be tracked and published month on month. This release is expected to be especially pertinent given how newsworthy China’s trading relationship with the US has been in recent weeks.

There’ll be several other key releases over the course of the day too. Mortgage applications data out of the US for the dates around August 2nd are due at 11am GMT. These were last recorded at -1.4%.

Japanese bank lending figures for July will be out at 11.50pm GMT. Year on year, this is expected to show a change from 2.3% to 2.2%.

Thursday morning, China’s trade balance figures for July will be released at 2am GMT, which are again expected to be closely watched.

Initial jobless claims for the dates around August 2nd will be out of the US at 12.30pm GMT, for the dates around August 2nd. These are expected to show a downward trend from 215,000 to 214,000, suggesting that there may well be some firepower in the US economy yet. This is likely to be reinforced by the results of the continuing jobless claims metric for the dates around July 26th, which is expected to show a drop from 1,699,000 to 1,696,000.

New Zealand will publish the number of visitors who arrived on its shores in June at 10.45pm GMT. Year on year, this is expected to show a change from -1.2% to +3%.

The Governor of the Bank of New Zealand is expected to make a speech at some stage in the day, although it is not yet known exactly when. This may well focus on the Bank’s interest rate decision, whatever that transpires to be.

Preliminary Japanese gross domestic product figures covering the second quarter of the year will round off the day at 11.50pm GMT.