The Week Head:- BOJ, RBA and BOC Meetings

An exciting week for markets, with three major currency central banks announcing their monetary policy decisions and a Nonfarm payroll report. The RBA’s meeting on Tuesday is the most likely to be the live one, but don’t write off the BOJ’s ability of surprising market at Governor Kuroda’s last meeting of his 10-year reign.

And the NFP report could be the cherry on top for the week, given it blew past expectations on January with over a 500k jobs growth print, creating a strong-dollar response and for some members to doubt their own December projections. It will certainly be a report to watch.

Money markets priced in a 4% ECB terminal rate.

Fed members continued their hawkish rhetoric, with Kashkari open to a 25 or 50bp March hike the terminal rate could be higher than 5.4%, along with Waller. Australian GDP and inflation reports were softer than expected. China’s PMI data was stronger than expected, the Hang Seng enjoyed its second best day this year.

BOE’s Governor Baily’s speech suggested the BOE’s next rate decision is finely balanced between a hike and a hold.
The Reserve Bank of Australia is expected to hike cash rate by 25bp on Tuesday, it would be their 10th consecutive hike to take the cash rate to 3.6%. The RBA cash rate futures imply a 75% chance of such an outcome, down from 81% earlier in the week following softer GDP and inflation figures.

The case may have diminished slightly for another 25bp hike, but it remains strong enough to almost take as a given, due to inflation remaining over 7%. So that likely means we need to pour over the statement to look for any clues of a slower pace of tightening or of a pause. The odds of a smaller hike or actual pause strike as slim. But it is such unexpected events that trigger the higher levels of volatility.

Bank Of Canada meeting:

The BOC’s OCR is currently 4.5% after slowing their pace of tightening to 25bp in December. And in all likelihood, they are going to hold rates at a 15-year high on Wednesday.

Their January statement suggested that to be the case, should data remain in line with their own forecast:
“IF economic developments evolve broadly in line with the MPR outlook, Governing Council expects to hold the policy rate at its current level while it assesses the impact of the cumulative interest rate increases”.

Bank Of Japan:

The BOJ’s Friday 10th March meeting as his last chance to change policy before handing over the reign to his successor, Kazuo Weda. But given that Kazuo Ueda’s confirmation hearing in February was as dovish as ever, we will not hold our breath for any sudden change by Kuroda’s BOJ on Friday. But if we’ve learned anything from the BOJ over the years, it is to expect the unexpected. So be on guard for volatility irrespective of your own expectations, because then the worst case scenario is that nothing moves.