Market movers today
Another quiet day in terms of economic data releases with the preliminary US consumer confidence indicator from University of Michigan for April. Despite market volatility and trade policy uncertainty, we do not see the case for a significant drop in consumer confidence at the moment and still expect private consumpt ion to be a main growth driver in the US.
Selected market news
Yesterday’s key event s were the ECB minutes and the Swedish inflat ion figures.
Swedish inflation was in line with our expectations, and a tenth below the consensus as downside risk appears to have been realized. Most interest ing here is that CPIF ex. energy remained at 1.5 % yoy, which is 0.3 p.p. below Riksbank’s forecast . This means that the decline we expected in April to some extent happened already in March. Over the next four months a lot base effects will be in play. Presumably this number is not what Riksbank hoped for.
The ECB minutes released yesterday do not make us change our assessment of ECB being slow in its normalisat ion process, but risks of ECB coming later than current ly envisaged in June have increased.
Risk sentiment was positive as equity indices rose across Europe and in the US. Overnight , news from Trump indicate that the US may want to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (a t rade deal which Trump withdrew the US from after taking office). This suggest s another conciliatory signal from the US in recent days and should support risk appet ite. Nikkei is up overnight while Hang Seng is unchanged.
