In the European session we won’t have much other than some low tier releases. The main highlight will be the US University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment report in the American session. As a reminder the February Final release weighed on the stock market as long-term inflation expectations jumped to a new 30-year high, so the market will be focused on that.

14:00 GMT/10:00 ET – US March UMich Consumer Sentiment

The Consumer Sentiment is expected at 63.1 vs. 64.7 prior. Compared to the Conference Board consumer confidence, which is more biased towards the labour market, the consumer sentiment survey is more weighted towards consumers’ finances. In fact, analysts believe that it’s a better predictor of
consumer spending than the consumer confidence report, which is also why the expectations index in the survey is included in the Leading Economic Index (LEI).

This is generally more market-moving at turning points in the cycles or when we have big deviations from the expected numbers. The sentiment has been dropping fast in the past couple of months due to the Trump’s trade wars. The biggest concern has been the rise in inflation expectations, particularly the long-term ones which reached a new 30-year high in the last report.