Summary:

  • ECB decision and post-meeting conference may shake the markets in the early afternoon

  • Semi-important data from the Canadian housing market to be released today

  • Investors may take a closer look at today’s jobless claims data ahead of the NFP report

Thursday is the most awaited day of this week by the EUR traders as European Central Bank will announce its decision. However, as no changes to the level of rates is expected investors will pay closer attention to post-meeting conference. Apart from that, we will get some semi-important readings from the Canadian housing market and US labour market.

12:45 pm BST – ECB Interest Rate Decision. One of the main market events of the week. It seems like nothing unexpected can happen as QE programme was scheduled to be run until the end of September and to be later phased out during final quarter of the year. The interest rate is also expected to be left unchanged. However, today’s decision will be followed by the Mario Draghi’s conference at 1:30 pm BST thus investors will turn their attention to this event in search for a hints heralding a change of central bankers’ attitude.

1:15 pm BST – Canada, Housing Starts for February. Canadian housing market has been performing surprisingly well in the recent months as all of the housing starts readings since June 2017 have beaten market expectations. This time market consensus calls for a reading of 215k what would be a little below last month’s 216.2k. Fifteen minutes later data concerning newly issued building permits in January is going to be released. When it comes to this reading economists surveyed by Bloomberg point for a decrease of 1.5% MoM against last month’s increase of 4.8%.

1:30 pm BST – US, Initial Jobless Claims. A weekly piece of data from the US labour market. Having in mind that the NFP report is going to be published tomorrow investors may take a closer look at the jobless claims data in order to assess what the condition of the labour market is. However, as this data is published more often than the others its market impact may be insignificant. Market consensus calls for a reading of 220k against last month’s 210k.

Central bank speakers scheduled for today:

4:00 pm BST – BoC Governor Poloz

8:50 pm BST – BoC Deputy Governor Lane

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EURUSD has been consolidating between 1.2500 and 1.2200 as of late. Will Mario Draghi provide EUR with fuel to test the upper bound of the trading range? Source: xStation5