Canadian retail sales for June coming up next

The main highlight of the day for North American traders comes at 10 am ET with Powell’s speech at Jackson Hole (US new home sales are due at the same time). Before that, Canada gets a moment in the spotlight with June retail sales at 8:30 am ET.

The consensus is -0.3%, which was the preliminary reading. A big revision to that would be notable but if not, the focus will be on the advance July reading. RBC’s consumer tracker — which relies on credit card data — showed a decline of 0.6% so that’s a decent baseline for what’s expected, as there is no consensus.

A soft reading would add to the BOC to cut, perhaps more than 25 bps on Sept 4. Right now, pricing is 94% for 25 bps and 6% for 50 bps.

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.