– Signs around the road will be exciting – E24

Interest rate meetings, quarterly results and retail turnover numbers are among what’s on the list for the last full week of July.

Next week brings the interest rate meetings of both the US Federal Reserve (Fed) and the European Central Bank (ESB).

These will be the big highlights, believes Kjersti Haugland, chief economist at DNB Markets.

The signs about the way forward for both the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank are dramatic. Interest rate decisions may not be exciting in and of themselves, says Hoagland, since there is a widely expected interest rate jump of 0.25 percentage point for both.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve (Fed) ends its two-day meeting and will announce its interest rate decision at 20:00 Norwegian time.

At its June interest rate meeting, the Fed took its first interest rate break in more than two years, and kept the key interest rate unchanged in the 5-5.25 percent range.

according to CME FedWatch tool The market expects that it is more than 99 percent likely to raise the interest rate by 0.25 percentage point in July. In this case, the main interest rate will remain in the range of 5.25 – 5.5 percent.

positive for the markets

The minutes of the previous meeting show that the decision was unanimous, but some Fed members may consider raising interest rates by 0.25 percentage points.

Hoagland notes that the Fed has received positive signals about inflation since its last interest rate meeting. In June, price growth slowed to three percent, which was lower than expected.

The Fed has been quite clear that plans are to raise interest rates twice more this year. It may be that they’re formulating themselves a little differently this time around, opening up more to the fact that this could be the summit, she says.

Positive signals from the Federal Reserve could have a positive impact on markets, says Hoagland.

– If we get a “soft” tone from the Fed, with messages about interest rate peaks and positive signals about inflation, that will also be positive for stock exchanges. She says that gives investors a signal that the economy could easily go down.

Less reassuring signals

The day after the Fed, on Thursday, it was the European Central Bank’s turn to come to a decision on the interest rate.

In June, the European Central Bank raised the main interest rate by 0.25 percentage points to 3.5 percent, and at the same time indicated that the interest rate would continue to rise. The interest rate is expected to be raised by 0.25 percentage point to 3.75 percent on Thursday.

Kjersti Haugland points out that the eurozone has not experienced a similar decline in inflation as it has in the United States. In June, the price increase came by 5.5 percent compared to the same month last year.

– They received confirmation that the economy is a little weaker, which will of course affect the discussion in the interest rate board, you say.

Analysts expect another rate hike in September, according to the chief economist.

– Inflation in the eurozone remains very high, while wage growth is high. Hoagland says the European Central Bank has also received, to a lesser extent, reassuring signals, as has the United States of America.

Expect a drop in retail

In its home country of Norway, Statistics Norway released figures on retail turnover in June.

In May, Norwegians shopped more, and retail turnover increased by 1.2 percent in volume terms compared to April.

DNB Markets expects a slight decline of 0.3 percent in June.

– The numbers were strong in May, and we expect things to cool down a bit in June, says chief economist Kjersti Haugland.

In Oslo Borz, the seasonal season is still going on and on.

Stock market locomotive Equinor opens its accounting books for the second quarter on Wednesday. Vår Energi and Subsea 7 also offer quarterly numbers during the week.

On Wall Street, US tech giants Meta, Alphabet and Microsoft will present the numbers next week. Many large companies, including Tesla and a number of major banks, have so far outperformed analyst expectations.

The figures come from other global companies from Boeing, Ryanair, Intel and Samsung.

Preliminary PMI figures will also be shown from a number of countries next week, including the US, UK, France and Germany.