Take Five: Ready for an action-packed week?
2024.10.25 17:09
LONDON (Reuters) – Traders will have their work cut out keeping up with Japan’s snap election, U.S. jobs data, a UK budget, euro zone growth numbers and a slew of third-quarter earnings.
And as a U.S. presidential election nears, global market swings are getting bigger.
Here’s all you need to know about the week ahead from Lewis Krauskopf in New York, Kevin Buckland in Tokyo and Naomi Rovnick, Amanda Cooper and Sinead Cruise in London.
1/ MEGACAPS, THEN JOBS
A full-on week of U.S. earnings is capped by Friday’s key jobs data.
Five of the “Magnificent Seven” U.S. titans report quarterly results: Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:) on Oct. 29, Microsoft (NASDAQ:) and Facebook parent Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:) on Oct. 30, and Apple (NASDAQ:) and Amazon (NASDAQ:) on Oct. 31. The companies have an outsized influence on markets because of their massive market values.
Tesla (NASDAQ:), the first of the “Magnificent Seven” to report, said on Wednesday it expects to achieve slight growth in vehicle deliveries this year and reported a higher-than-expected third-quarter profit margin. Economists meanwhile expect the U.S. economy created 140,000 new jobs in October, versus 254,000 in September.
Two significant storms could skew the data, which comes just ahead of the Nov. 5 U.S. election and a potential 25-basis-point rate cut from the Federal Reserve on Nov. 7.
2/ SNAP
When new Japanese premier Shigeru Ishiba called a snap election just weeks ago, he had expected to consolidate his party’s hold on power.
But his Liberal Democratic Party could lose its absolute majority after Sunday’s election and fall short of enough seats to govern when combined with coalition partner Komeito.
Japanese equities, hurt by uncertainty, are on the backfoot.
A disastrous loss could force Ishiba to fall on his sword, wresting the dubious mantle of shortest-serving prime minister from Sosuke Uno, who held office for under 10 weeks in 1989.
Taking on an additional coalition partner could force Ishiba to shelve some market-unfriendly policies he has favoured, such as higher corporate and capital gains taxes.
Politics could make the Bank of Japan’s job more difficult, with policy normalisation already complicated by a fragile economy and unstable markets. It is expected to stand pat at its meeting ending on Thursday.
3/ TRICK OR TREAT?
Britain’s new Labour government unveils its first budget on Wednesday.
With few choices available to finance minister Rachel Reeves as she balances high debt, public spending pledges and a promise not to hike income tax, markets fear extra borrowing and tax grabs on capital gains, dividends and inherited wealth.
The 10-year gilt yield is about 18 bps higher this week, dragged up in part by rising U.S. Treasury yields, even after soft inflation fuelled hopes for UK rate cuts.
Gripped by budget uncertainty, UK stocks are underperforming again after a promising pre-election rally for these long-term laggards.
But bullish UK investors, a thinning crowd, reckon British markets could bounce if Reeves’ Halloween-eve budget is less frightening than Labour’s gloomy assessments of the economy suggested.
4/ EVEN SICKER MAN
The euro is witnessing one of its worst runs ever.
It has only posted four up-days in the last month, its weakest performance since May 2012, when a sovereign debt crisis threatened the survival of the currency bloc.
The prospect of U.S. rates not falling as quickly as anticipated has boosted the dollar, while expectations for Republican Donald Trump to win the November election are hitting the euro, given the risk of a sharp rise in U.S. tariffs on European goods.
The European Central Bank is expected to ramp up rate cuts as the currency bloc’s economy sputters, especially in Germany. Europe’s powerhouse is deteriorating faster than any other industrialised country and the coming week brings data on growth and inflation that are unlikely to offer much reassurance.
5/ TRUST US
UBS and HSBC are leading European banks reporting Q3 earnings in the coming days, following Deutsche Bank and Barclays.
The sector is healthier than at any point since the global financial crisis, yet investors want reassurance they can trust its longer-term earnings power as interest rates fall.
Besides looking for evidence of asset quality resilience, they want a sharper strategy, lower costs and the potential to outperform in a low growth global economy.
HSBC has already set the tone this week, unveiling a streamlined executive committee and a merger of some costly banking operations in a sweeping restructuring along East-West lines.
But as Deutsche showed, past problems can still detract from future goals. The German lender blamed a lacklustre domestic economy for higher provisions against a possible rise in bad debts to 1.8 billion euros ($1.95 billion) for the full year, from 1.5 billion euros last year.
($1 = 0.9239 euros)
(Graphics by Pasit Kongkunakornkul, Kripa Jayram, Prinz Magtulis and Tom Sims; Compiled by Dhara Ranasinghe; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
