Coming up today, the focus is on the CPI data from Australia. Its a quarterly affair only, no official monthly data - so today is a bog deal for local markets.

OK, from the top:

2150 GMT - Reserve Bank of Australia Assistant Governor (Financial Markets) speech - The Limits of Interest-only Lending. So, watch for housing-lending related comments (house prices have fallen a small amount in the last 12 months, tighter lending has played a role in this) and also comments more widely on the economy and policy.

2245GMT - migration numbers from New Zealand.

  • Strong net migration is supportive of growth in coming months and years, but can weigh on inflation (more labour, potential weight on wages). There is usually little immediate FX impact from this data point.

2330GMT - Australia - weekly consumer confidence number from the ANZ / Roy Morgan survey

  • prior 116.0 and stable recently (slight wobbles)

2350GMT - Japan - Services PPI for March

  • expected +0.5% y/y, prior +0.6%

The PPI was previously known as the corporate goods price index (CGPI). It's a guide to wholesale pricing - what companies charge each other (and government) for goods and services. The data release is unlikely to provide too much movement for FX.

0130GMT - Australia - Inflation data for the first quarter of 2018

For the 'headline'

  • expected is +0.5% q/q
  • prior was +0.6%
  • For the y/y, expected is 2.0%, prior 1.9%

For the 'trimmed mean' (which is the measure the RBA pays most heed to - its the 'core' inflation figure where the RBA target band is 2 -3%)

  • expected 0.5%
  • prior 0.4% q/q
  • For the trimmed mean y/y result, expected is 1.8%, prior 1.8%

Finally, there is the 'weighted median' CPI, also a core measure:

  • expected 0.5%, prior was 0.4%
  • For weighted median y/y, expected 1.9%, prior was 2.0%

I posted previews of this earlier and will have more to come:

Much later, due from Japan at 0500 - leading and coincident indexes for February, preliminary. (Can someone explain what is going on when you get a leading index, for nearly 3 months ago ... and its just the preliminary? Beats me.)