Coming up at 1230GMT on Friday 20 April 2018, Canadian February retail sales and March CPI
Retail sales expected +0.4% m/m, prior +0.3%
- Retail sales ex-auto expected +0.4% m/m, prior +0.9%
CPI NSA expected 0.4% m/m, prior 0.6%
- For the y/y, CPI expected 2.4%, prior 2.2%
Previews of both via RBC:
We expect nominal retail sales to rise 1.1% m/m in February, largely driven by rising gasoline prices and a ~2% gain in motor vehicle sales in the month.
- The latter coming after an unexpected 1.2% m/m drop in January.
- Excluding gasoline and autos, core nominal sales should rise a more modest 0.4% m/m after a 0.9% increase in January.
- Retail volumes are forecasted to rise 0.7% m/m, largely driven by autos, after a meagre 0.1% m/m increase in January. This outcome would be consistent with a roughly 0.3% m/m increase in February GDP after factoring in a bounce-back in oil sands production
We see another 0.6% m/m gain in headline CPI in April, taking the YoY rate to an elevated 2.6%, which would be the highest in six years.
- Energy prices are a big part of the YoY increase (gasoline contributing 0.4pp alone), but the MoM increase should be largely from regular March seasonals (worth ~0.3pp) and continuing firming in trend prices (worth ~0.2pp). A reflection of the latter is the BoC's three core measures averaging 2.03% in February, up 0.2pp from January, though still consistent with the BoC seeing underlying inflation around 2%.
- A weak March 2017 reading dropping out for each of CPI-Median and CPI-Trim could see the average bump higher again this time around.
