Happy Monday and welcome to our short and sweet coverage of the data calendar for the week ahead. We try to map the events with market moving potential and exploit weaknesses or skews in the economic consensus around them.

This week we see strong upside to US retail sales, Chinese GDP, while soft downside to the UK CPI figures. 

Event 1: US Retail sales ex auto MoM (Mon) – Steno Research 0.6%, Consensus 0.5% 

The various retail nowcasts we track have performed strongly through March, and some of the more upbeat estimates suggest that retail sales rose close to 1% through the month (see e.g. the Redbook data).

Our own assessment of the seasonal adjustment patterns also suggests that February was “overly punished”, and if the 2023 playbook works again this year, the exaggerated adjustments are mostly reversed in March. This also speaks in favor of a strong retail sales number.

Chart 1a: Strong rebound in Redbook retail data

Chart 1b: Volatility in seasonal adjustments impacting data positively in March (chart shows category on eating out)