Watch for housing starts, BoC business outlook

This coming week will be a light but important week for economic data, says National Bank in its week ahead report.

Housing starts for March will be released on Monday, followed by the Teranet-National Bank Composite Home Price Index for March on Thursday. Data on building permits for February will also come out.

National Bank predicts in its report, “Housing starts may have declined in March if, as we believe, groundbreakings for multis in Toronto and Montreal fell back from the unsustainable levels reached in February.”

The Bank of Canada’s latest Business Outlook survey will also come out on Monday, which National Bank expects “will attract a lot of attention.”

CIBC’s Avery Shenfeld says, in a Friday report from the bank, that he’ll be looking for BoC clues. “A surprisingly strong [BoC] outlook survey a year ago was key to advancing the timing for the first rate hike [for 2017], and a mixed picture on capital spending will be one key to our call for a delay in the next hike until July.” The BoC’s next meeting is May 30.

U.S. and global

In the U.S., the biggest release will be the consumer price index for March, which will come out on Tuesday, says National Bank. Both the producer price index and the NFIB Small Business Optimism index will be available next week for March, it adds.

The bank predicts that “headline prices may have been flat in the month, hampered by lower-than-usual gasoline prices for this time of the year. Nevertheless, we expect the year-on-year rate to rise two ticks to 2.4% due to a positive base effect […]. The core inflation rate, for its part, could have increased 0.2% m/m allowing the annual rate to climb three ticks to 2.1%.”

For the eurozone, we’ll get February’s numbers on industrial production and trade balance data.

For Japan, consumer confidence data for March will be published, while Japan will release CPI and trade balance data for the same time period.

Staff

The staff of Advisor.ca have been covering news for financial advisors since 1998.