26.08.16 Friday Morning

Last week was completely dominated by speculation over a speech by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen at an annual symposium in Jackson Hole. It will be interesting to see how the markets are affected in the week ahead.

UK
This week starts with a bank holiday in the UK and information is at a premium for the first half of the week. The year on year and month on month House Price Index released on Wednesday is the only update of note. However, traders will be interested in the Purchasing Managers’ Index for manufacturing (Thursday) and construction (Friday). Both values are expected to be slightly higher than July’s readings. The FTSE has retreated slightly since the highs of two weeks ago and it will be interesting to see how these figures affect this. 

US
The week may also be slow to get going in the States with the first stat of note coming in the form of Tuesday’s Consumer Confidence rating. However, this is predicted to be relatively unmoved from the 97.3 level for July and so is unlikely to cause any shift in the markets. Wednesday appears to be the pivotal day of the week with three major pieces of data to be released. Nonfarm Employment change is thought to be 170,000, slowing from last month’s 179,000 increase. Pending Home Sales month on month is predicted to rise to 0.7% from 0.2%; and Crude Oil Inventories are reported. This shows the weekly change in the number of barrels of commercial crude oil held by US firms and so has a big impact on the price of oil. Thursday sees the release of the US’ manufacturing PMI and the week ends with a report on Nonfarm Payrolls. This figure is expected to drop to 180,000, down from 255,000 from the previous month.

Eurozone
 The information vacuum continues in Europe to start the week with traders having to wait until Wednesday again for the first point of interest. German Unemployment Change looks to be particularly interesting, forecasted to move from -7,000 to -4,000. This is followed by a year on year CPI for the whole of the Eurozone, although this figure is not expected to have much of an effect on the markets. We again see a manufacturing PMI on Thursday, this time from Germany, but there is likely to be little change here either.

Stock of the week: Mylan PLC 
The healthcare company came under fire over their $600 price tag on its EpiPen. Mylan CEO, Heather Bresch, held “the middlemen” responsible although, Express Scripts chief medical officer, Steve Miller, was not convinced; stating “If she wants to lower the price she can lower the price today”. The issue has caused something of a furore in the Pharmaceutical industry and so it will be interesting to watch how this develops in the coming week.

(Source: IT-Finance.com 26/08/2016)