Oil
- Supply fears have given a boost to oil prices with WTI rising for the 2nd time on Tuesday getting close to $48 a barrel and Brent trading at $49.05
- One of the biggest disruptions to supply has been the massive fires in the Canadian oil sands regions
- But global supply has also been affected by outages in Nigeria and Venezuela
- Market participants who’ve been bearish on oil for a long time are changing their tune especially for prices in the second half of this year
U.K. employment & retail sales data
- Upcoming events to keep an eye on this week start with UK job data for April which will be published on Wednesday
- The amount of people receiving benefits is expected to rise,
- the jobless rate should stay the same,
- and wage growth is forecast to rise.
- Also for the UK we have the April retail sales data release on Thursday at 8.30 GMT. This should give us some hints on the strength of the UK’s economy and clues for any rate hikes by the Bank of England
The big event that every trader is waiting for this week is the FOMC meeting minutes
- On Wednesday at 6pm GMT, the minutes from the eagerly awaited FOMC meeting will be released.
- We’re expecting some guidance on what the Fed plans for further interest rate hikes.
- While they’ve led the markets to expect at least 2 hikes this year, at their last meeting in April, they stated they are in “no hurry to raise rates”.
- If an unexpected rise does come through then traders may need to be prepared for some US dollar volatility.
