Snapshot of this week's key US data releases - Nomura

Analysts at Nomura offered a preview in a snapshot of this week's key US data releases.

Key Quotes:

"We expect a 0.2% (0.169%) m-o-m increase in core CPI in April, which translates to a 2.2% (2.193%) y-o-y increase, up from 2.1% in the prior month. Consumer credit (Monday): Consumer credit likely expanded steadily in March following a $10.6bn increase in February. Solid gains in employment and income growth should support consumer credit growth in the near term. 

JOLTS job openings (Tuesday): Against the backdrop of a strong labor market, the job openings rate remained elevated at 3.9% in February, consistent with steady labor demand. The quits rate also remained relatively high at 2.2%, pointing to increased workers’ confidence in moving between jobs. As the labor market improves further, we expect continued improvement in these indicators in the near term. 

PPI (Wednesday): Upstream producer price pressures have strengthened recently. Stripping out volatile food, energy and trade service components, “core” PPI increased strongly by 0.4% m-o-m for the third consecutive month in March. The recent pickup in PPI is consistent with elevated prices paid index readings from incoming business surveys. Various regional surveys pointed to rising input prices while citing concerns over upward input price pressure from tariffs. A steady increase in April’s PPI report should highlight continued pipeline price pressure. 

Wholesale inventories (Wednesday): The Census Bureau’s advance estimate suggests that wholesale inventories rose a solid 0.5% m-o-m in March, driven by a firm 0.8% increase in the stock of durable goods. The improvement in wholesale inventories added solidly to GDP growth in Q1. We expect continued contribution from inventory accumulation to growth. 

Initial jobless claims (Thursday): Incoming data point to continued strength in the labor market. Weekly claims can often be volatile around holidays. The sharp drop in recent weeks portends a possible pick-up in coming weeks. However, the underlying trend should be intact. We look for initial jobless claims to remain low in the near term. 

CPI (Thursday): We expect a 0.2% (0.169%) m-o-m increase in core CPI in April, which translates to 2.2% (2.193%) y-o-y, up from 2.1% in the prior month. In our view, the underlying trend of core CPI is unchanged despite recent volatility in its subcomponents.