Canadian retail sales and the US Markit PMIs are on the economic calendar

What to watch for

There is only one release from Canada and one from the United States on Friday but they're both high-tier releases.

Canada is up first with the November retail sales report due at the bottom of the hour. The consensus is +0.6% but Poloz highlighted the possibility of a miss on Wednesday. He said that Statistics Canada is having a difficult time reconciling Amazon and other online sales bought from the US. Those numbers initially aren't counted until they're reconciled with import/exports data and revised. That means the Canadian consumer may be stronger than he/she appears.

At 1445 GMT, the focus is on the US economy with the manufacturing and services PMIs from Markit. These are a fresh look at the post-phase one economy but expectations are for no pickup in the manufacturing survey yet.

For more, see the economic calendar.