The Business News Week Ahead

The biggest news in the week will be what the Federal Reserve does or doesn't do to stem the spike underway in long-term interest rates, whether it targets long-end buying as the ECB did in the prior week or tries to jawbone rates lower with new warnings or wording. The Fed's meeting is on Wednesday and will be followed Thursday by the Bank of Japan and Bank of England where policy moves are also an option. Machinery orders from Japan will open the week on Monday with Japan to post merchandise trade data on Wednesday and February's CPI on Friday. Chinese data will be headlined by industrial production and retail sales on Tuesday, both for the combined months of January/February and both likely to be scrambled by comparison distortions tied to the lunar new year not to mention Covid effects. Thursday will see Australia's labour force survey followed on Friday by retail sales. European data will be light in the week, led by Germany where the ZEW sentiment survey will be posted on Tuesday and producer prices on Friday. In North America, Canada will post manufacturing sales on Monday and the CPI on Wednesday with US industrial production and retail sales to be two of Tuesday's highlights. Housing starts and permits for the US will follow on Wednesday and US jobless claims, which have been slowly improving, on Thursday. Revisions for French and Italian CPIs will be posted Tuesday and a revision to Eurozone HICP on Wednesday. Also note that clocks in the US and Canada will be moving forward before the week opens, on March 14.