Data Watch - April 20

CANADA

just international securities transactions data today

tomorrow is of course the big day, but not because wholesale sales for February will be released at 8:30 (expected to be up 1% after January's 4.2% fall)

this will be the first BoC Tuesday in a while where there was much doubt about what the Bank might do; will it cut rates from 0.50 or not? (I guess that it will set a range, like the Fed did, but at a higher level, leaving the ceiling at 0.50, and establishing a floor of something greater than 0 but no more than 0.25); what will its QE plan look like? will it buy GoCs? CMBs? CP? ABS? corporate bonds? (I guess that it will buy just GoCs and let the federal government agencies like BDB, EDC and the Finance Ministry target certain areas of the market to alleviate lending conditions); and, will it announce just what it COULD do, or will it also say that it WILL do it, or even announce that it is starting it? we should find out some, if not all, of this at 9 a.m. Tuesday; anything we don't find out then will have to wait for the MPR on Thursday at 10:30; February's retail sales will also be announced that day (expected to be down 0.3% MoM on headline but up 0.2% ex-autos after larger gains in January off of a very weak 4th quarter).

US

UPDATE:
March leading indicators, which have been on a downward trend since July 2007, were released at 10a.m.; the Conference Board LEI declined 0.3% in March, more than the forecasted decline of 0.2%, though February's result was revised to be less bad; real money supply and the slope of the yield curve contributed positively again in March, but were overwhelmed by building permits, stock prices and supplier deliveries; the coincident index declined 0.4%, led down by employment and industrial production, and the lagging index also fell 0.4%, leaving the coincident-to-lagging ratio unchanged

the Chicago Fed National Activity Index declined in March to -2.96, though the 3-mth moving average increased to -3.27 from -3.57, as December's -3.84 dropped out of the M.A., and will likely improve again next month when January's -4.03 drops out; employment made the largest negative contribution to the index yet again, though production and income also made a large negative contribution; about the same number of indicators improved from February to March as worsened; just 13 of the 85 indicators provided positive contributions, while 72 made negative

its mostly a back-end loaded week; jobless claims, as usual, on Thursday; existing home sales that day as well, with durable goods orders and new home sales to be released on Friday

INTERNATIONAL

the Japanese leading index for February was finalized at 75.0, a tick lower than expected, and the lowest its been since 1983; the coincident index is at 86, not yet as low as it was in '93 (80), '98 (84) or '01 (also 84)

not much else to report out there (unless anyone cares that Pakistan surprisingly dropped its benchmark interest rate from 15% to 14%)