Full-year company results are likely to be thin on the ground for at least one more week following the Financial Conduct Authority’s call for a moratorium. The dates below were set before the FCA’s announcement.
Monday 30 March
– Trading statement from FTSE 100 utility Pennon
– UK mortgage applications data
– GfK UK consumer confidence March reading
AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould noted that in February the reading stood at -7 which was an improvement from -9 in January and -13 a year ago.
He said: “As such, the trend had begun to look quite encouraging but events have taken a hand since then. All we can do is wait to see how big the drop is for March, thanks to the Covid-19 outbreak.
“For reference, the GfK consumer confidence reading bottomed at -39 in July 2008 during the last downturn.”
– US pending home sales data
Tuesday 31 March
– UK monthly current account
– Chinese purchasing managers’ indices (PMIs).
In February the scores were 35.7 for manufacturing where the previous low was 38.2 in December 2008, and 29.6 for non-manufacturing (services) compared with the previous low of 41.9 in March 2009.
– EU inflation figures
– Cash/Shiller US house price index
– Conference Board US consumer confidence index
Mould said: “This has moved in lock-step with the S&P 500 index since the end of the financial crisis, so a drop from last month’s 130.7 is on the cards.”
Wednesday 1 April
– UK manufacturing PMI data
Mould said just like consumer confidence, all three PMIs – manufacturing, construction and services – looked pretty solid in February with both manufacturing and construction rising and services dipping only slightly. All three came in above 50 for the first time since April 2019.
“It seems logical to assume that the outbreak will mean we see big dips in all three readings and the preliminary scores from late March give a flavour when manufacturing dipped to 48.0 and services slumped to 35.7.”
Flash PMIs pointed to the UK facing a recession on a scale “not seen in modern history”.
– Quarterly Japanese Tankan (Short-Term Economic Survey of Enterprises in Japan)
Mould said: “The Tankan, for current business conditions for all enterprises, peaked at 17 in Q1 2018 and had subsided to 4 even before the Covid-19 outbreak, amid fears of a global slowdown and trade wars. The Nikkei’s recent plunge means a weak reading is expected with the first negative reading since Q2 2013 a possibility.”
– Manufacturing PMIs in Asia, Europe and America
– China Caixin Manufacturing PMI
Canaccord Genuity Wealth Management head of MPS and passive Jordan Sriharan said: “In the country where Covid-19 was first discovered in January, business sentiment in the manufacturing sector in China nosedived in February, from 51.1 to 40.3. The data release for March will be interesting to note, as China is starting to show signs of recovery. But has it come early enough for manufacturing business sentiment to improve from February?”
– EU unemployment figures
– US monthly car sales data
– US oil inventories data
Thursday 2 April
– UK PMI construction data
Friday 3 April
– UK PMI services data
– US non-farm payrolls and unemployment rate
The creation of 273,000 new jobs outside of agriculture in February helped take the unemployment rate down to 3.5%, a 51-year low. But the spread of Covid-19 led to unemployment claims rising to 3.3 million for the week ending 21 March, up from 282,000 the previous week.
Sriharan said: “Industries reporting the largest job losses include hotels and restaurants, and illustrate that businesses are already cutting costs. The US unemployment rate currently stands at 3.5%, the lowest it has been in 50 years, and while it is difficult to extrapolate last week’s jobless claims number, economists are forecasting that the unemployment rate could jump by as much as 2 percentage points in March.”
– Services PMIs in Asia, Europe and US
