The Bank of England (BoE) will make its monetary policy decision this Thursday at 1 p.m., while on Tuesday the Australian central bank raised its rates by 50 basis points. In a speech at the end of July, BoE Governor Andrew Bailey assured that a rate hike of 0.5 percentage point was on the table.
A record rate hike
This would be the strongest increase observed since 1995, which would bring the British key rate (repo) to 1.75%. Inflation accelerated further in June, to 9.4% over one year, a record in 40 years, and poses a risk to the purchasing power of precarious households. Thus, some analysts are not ruling out an increase of 75 basis points, especially since soaring gas prices and tensions in the labor market are helping to fuel inflation.
In the euro zone, there will also be a question of monetary policy since the European Central Bank will publish its economic bulletin in the morning. In the early afternoon, in the United States, operators will follow the traditional new weekly jobless claims for the week ended July 30. The June trade balance will also be analyzed.
Credit Agricole in difficulty
On the values side, Agricultural credit will unveil its half-yearly accounts and close the publications of the week for Cac 40 companies. Over the first three months of the year, the French bank had seen its profits collapse by more than half because of the war in Ukraine. The bad spiral should continue since for the second quarter, analysts at Deutsche Bank anticipate a 3% drop in income, accompanied by a drop in adjusted net income of 24% in the space of a year. For the full semester, operating expenses are expected to increase, which will not support earnings. In France, investors will also follow the half-yearly Rothschild & Co.
Still on the Old Continent, several component companies of the Dax, the flagship German index, will publish their results for the period from April to June. Among them will be Adidas, Bayer, Merck, Zalando, Hannover Rück and Beiersdorf. The airline company Lufthansa, which is no longer part of the flagship index, will also unveil its quarterly. Still internationally, investors will peel the accounts of the Chinese Ali Baba and Americans Conoco Phillips and Amgen.