Monday in the forex markets: what’s ahead?

With a brief respite between the Christmas and New Year holidays now taking place in the foreign exchange markets, it’s time to see what’s happening as a new week gets underway.

This morning (Monday) will be a relatively busy day, with retail sales figures for November due to be released first at 7am from Germany.

Month on month, this release is expected to show a change from -1.9% to +1%.

On a year on year basis, it is due to show a change from 0.8% to 0.9%.

Later, gross domestic product figures will be released from Spain.

These are due to be released at 8am GMT and will cover Q3 of 2019.

It is expected that they will show no change from their previous position of 2%.

Preliminary Spanish consumer price index information for December will be out at the same time.

Month on month, this was last recorded at 0.2%.

Mortgage approvals data will be out of Britain at 9:30am GMT and are set to provide insight into the state of the housing market during a turbulent month which saw both developments in the uncertain Brexit saga as well as a general election.

In the US, a Chicago purchasing managers’ index (PMI) covering the month of December will be out at 2:45pm GMT.

This looks set to show a change from 46.3 to 47.9.

This will be closely followed at 3pm GMT by a pending home sales data release covering November, which is expected to show a change from 4.4% to 5.8% on a year on year basis.

On a month on month basis, this metric is set to show a change from -1.7% to +1.5%.

Some markets will begin to close down for the New Year holiday on Monday during the GMT day period, including Australia.

Some other markets, however, will remain open into Tuesday – meaning that traders of many currencies will need to stay alert for macroeconomic developments.

One such development will be a non-manufacturing purchasing managers’ index for December from China, which is expected to show a change from 50.2 to 50.1.

There is a US housing price index release scheduled, and this is set to come out covering October at 2pm GMT.

This is predicted to show a drop from 0.6% to 0.3%.

Consumer confidence figures are also due out of the US in the afternoon, at 3pm.

Wednesday will be a very quiet day in the foreign exchange markets due to the New Year’s Day holiday which is celebrated in a wide range of European, North American and Antipodean countries.

Some economies, however, will remain active over the course of the day.

There is set to be a vehicle sales data release from Japan at some stage.

Some economies which are ahead of the GMT time zone will also begin to come back to post-holiday life on Wednesday.

The Commonwealth Bank manufacturing PMI for December, for example, will come out at 10pm GMT.