Forex calendar midweek update: what’s coming up?

The middle of the foreign exchange trading week is already upon us, and that means it’s time to assess what the economic calendar has in store over the next few days.

Today (Wednesday), there will be a wide range of major releases from the US over lunchtime in the GMT zone.

At 12:30pm GMT, the main event – the preliminary annualised gross domestic product release – will occur, covering Q3 of 2019.

This is widely expected to show a change from 2% to 1.7%, which – if it transpires – is a significant drop.

For the foreign exchange markets, the key question will be whether or not this will influence future Federal Reserve interest rate cuts after today’s priced-in announcement later in the day.

Other key data releases scheduled in for that time slot include core personal consumption expenditures data from the US covering Q3 of 2019.

This is expected to show a quarter on quarter change from 1.9% to 2.2%.

Overall employment change as calculated by an organisation called ADP will be out at 12:15pm GMT, covering October.

This is generally expected to show a change from 135,000 to 120,000.

Around the world, attention will shift slightly away from the US over the afternoon.

A preliminary harmonised index of consumer prices for October will be out of Germany at 1pm GMT and is forecast to show a year on year change from 0.9% to 0.8%.

Canada will also be in the spotlight when it reveals its interest rate decision at 2pm GMT.

This is predicted to show no change from its previous position of 1.75%.

The US Federal Reserve will release its interest rate decision at 6pm GMT, and this is likely to be the main area of focus for traders over the course of the date.

This particular central bank is also expected to end up with a headline interest rate of 1.75%, like its neighbour over the border – although this time it will be coming down from 2%, representing a 0.25% basis points cut.

It will be followed by a statement and then a press conference from the Federal Open Market Committee at 6:30pm GMT.

Looking ahead to tomorrow (Thursday), the first key event will be a consumer confidence survey out of the UK at 12:01am GMT, covering October.

At the moment, there are predictions by analysts that this could show a change from -12 to -13.

Australian building permits data for September will be out at 12:30am GMT.

This is forecast to show a month on month change from -1.1% to +0.5%.

The Bank of Japan is scheduled to make its monetary policy statement at some point over the course of the day, although a time for this has not yet been specified.

It is now widely expected by analysts that interest rates in the country will be kept at their current position in negative territory – specifically, of -0.1%.

It will be followed by an outlook report covering Q3 of the year.