What are the main events for today?

In the European session, we don’t have anything on the agenda other than a few ECB and BoE speakers. They are unlikely to change their current stance though.

In the American session, we have the US Durable Goods Orders, the final US Q1 GDP and the US Jobless Claims. The Durable Goods data is almost never a market-moving release because it’s a very volatile indicator. The GDP is also rarely market moving because it’s old news.

As a quick note, the GDP report is for economists, not traders. We
are almost in Q3, so who cares about Q1? Remember that markets move based
on future expectations. In the last part of the Global Financial Crisis,
when GDP was still showing negative figures, the market continued to
rally because everyone was looking at better times ahead with all the
government stimuli and so on. So, even if GDP is marked as “high impact”
release on economic calendars, remember that how the calendars mark an
economic release doesn’t mean anything.

The main highlight then is the US Jobless Claims data. The US Jobless
Claims continue to be one of the most important releases to follow every
week
as it’s a timelier indicator on the state of the labour market. The Fed
will need clear signals of a deterioration in the labour market to look
through the expected pickup in inflation due to tariffs and deliver rate
cuts. If the labour market remains resilient, the Fed won’t have conviction to cut unless inflation continues to remain muted.

Initial Claims remain inside
the 200K-260K range created since 2022 but Continuing Claims have been
rising to new cycle highs more recently. There
are a few caveats though. The first one is that claims tend to rise in
the summer and the second one is that the recent Continuing Claims rise
is likely due to workers having difficulty finding a job given the
economic uncertainty rather than increased layoffs.

Initial Claims are expected at 245K vs 245K prior, while Continuing Claims are seen at 1950K vs 1945K prior.

Central bank speakers:

• 08:30 GMT/04:30 ET – BoE’s Breeden (neutral – voter)
• 09:45 GMT/05:45 ET – ECB’s de Guindos (neutral – voter)
• 11:00 GMT/07:00 ET – ECB’s Schnabel (neutral – voter)
• 11:00 GMT/07:00 ET – BoE’s Bailey (neutral – voter)
• 12:00 GMT/08:00 ET – Fed’s Barkin (neutral – non voter)
• 13:00 GMT/09:00 ET – Fed’s Hammack (neutral – non voter)
• 17:15 GMT/13:15 ET – Fed’s Barr (neutral – voter)
• 18:30 GMT/14:30 ET – ECB’s Lagarde (neutral – voter)