Welcome to “The Week At A Glance”. Everything you need to know about the key figures in the week ahead and how we trade them. This week we focus on the BoE, the Riksbank, Norwegian CPI numbers and Japanese wage-flation.

Bank of England (Thurs): No reason to cut for now.. 

Markets see August as the most likely timing for a cut from the Bank of England and as the March inflation report surprised on the high side of consensus, the services inflation still runs at a 0.4-0.5% MoM pace adjusted for seasonality.

Price trends have re-accelerated in the CBI selling prices survey and GDP seems to be recovering – especially when judging from the extraordinary healthy Services momentum relative to elsewhere in April. Our nowcasts also keep improving on a trend basis in the UK (see chart 1b), and most medium-term indicators on inflation have started to re-accelerate (see chart 1c)

Goods-flation is on the other hand soft, and the BRC shop price index keeps disinflating in YoY terms, but it seems to be second in the pecking order to wage/services-flation.

The bottom-line is that there are few reasons to sound like a rate cut is around the corner. A Powell-esque wait and see approach is the most likely, and we struggle to see who’s close to joining Dhingra in voting for a cut.

An 8 to 1 hawkish hold seems likely, and we generally find GBP and GBP equities attractive accordingly. 

There is no scope to cut interest rates right here right now in the UK, and we consider the case very similar to the FOMC.

Chart 1a: BoE priced to deliver a cut in August