Its Friday here in the Asian timezone, but its not a holiday ... we got some eco data coming up from Australia, China and Japan.
The Australian data of most relevance today is retail sales ... the RBA wants households to unleash the wallet and spend, spend, spend (but not on buying houses in Sydney, K?)
From the top ....
2330GMT - AiG Services PMI (officially its the Performance of Services Index) for June, prior was 49.6. Earlier this week (and month) we got the manufacturing PMI ... it was dreadful, an 8 point plunge into contraction again.
0130GMT ... the biggie for today ... May Retail Sales
- expected is +0.5% and prior was flat at 0.0% change m/m
April retail sales were disappointing given we had a rate cut from the RBA in February. May is likely to show improvement; the employment market improved, house prices are up, and sentiment was a little better ... If the retail sales does disappoint for this release today the chatter of sooner cuts from the RBA will pick up. An on-expected, or a beat, on the other hand, will give the central bank time to breathe a little.
For the AUD (I'll have better levels a little later), a miss sees it come under pressure, but support is around just around 0.7590. A beat should help the AUD steady, but resistance isn't far away, starting from 0.7650/60 then ahead of 0.7700. Greece headlines are, as always now, a wildcard ... though we tend to be spared them during this time zone.
Also on the agenda today, 15 minutes after the retail sales data, we get services PMI out of China (HSBC version). Services PMI is of note, but its not an impactful point to the extent the manufacturing PMIs are.
