Today’s data calendar is relatively light. France and Italy will release industrialproduction for January and provide important input on the direction of the overalleuro area industrial production data to be released on Wednesday. We expect gains inindustrial production a little bit ahead of consensus for France. In the euro area, theSentix investor confidence for March will be released and should provide a firstindication on the strength of March.
The euro group finance ministers will meet today in Brussels at 14:00 without anurgent agenda. It is possible that an exit strategy for Portugal could be discussed.Negotiations about a final agreement on a common resolution mechanism for failingbanks in connection with the banking union are also likely to continue.
There are also a number of speeches from central bankers on the calendar today. Bankof France governor and ECB Governing Council member Christian Noyer isscheduled to speak twice today. The Fed’s FOMC Charles Plosser, (voter, hawk) andCharles Evans (non-voter, dove) are also both due to speak.
The Bank of Japan will announce its decision from this week’s monetary meetingearly tomorrow morning before markets open in Europe. At its previous meeting inFebruary, BoJ announced some minor easing measures and the data released sincethen has in general been better than expected, suggesting that the economy isrelatively strong ahead of the planned consumption tax hike in April. Hence we thinkBoJ is very unlikely to announce any major easing measure in connection with thismonetary meeting.
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Danske Bank