It's a busy day on the agenda coming up with plenty from Australia ... but is everyone's focus on equity markets?

Quite slippy, hey? ;-)

2230 GMT - Australia - weekly consumer confidence

  • Weekly consumer sentiment from the ANZ Roy Morgan survey (week ended February 4)
  • prior was 120.9, the indicator is steadying around higher levels in recent months

Let's see how this translates into consumer spending, we'll get December retails sales data from Australia today a little later

0001 GMT UK data - BRC sales like-for-like

  • expected +0.7% y/y, prior +0.6%
  • British Retail Consortium data "like-for-like" sales (this basis strips out changes in store size)

0030 GMT - Australia trade balance and retail sales data points for December

Trade Balance

  • expected AUD 200m
  • prior AUD -628m

Retail Sales

  • expected -0.2% m/m
  • prior +1.2% m/m
  • Also, Retail Sales excluding inflation for Q4, expected +1%, prior +0.1%

I'll have more to come on these two separately

0330 GMT - Australia - Reserve Bank of Australia monetary policy meeting statement

I posted a couple of quickie previews of this here:

And I'll have more to come on this separately