Asian markets were mixed with Wall Street indices posting losses for the second week

Economic data releases and the G7 summit in Japan will be the highlights of this week in the Asia Pacific region.

On Monday, Thailand’s GDP for the first quarter will be released in the morning. Economists at Goldman Sachs expect the economy to grow 1.8% qoq as consumption picks up and inventories rebound amid slowing factory activity.

China releases a slew of economic data on Tuesday: industrial production, retail sales, fixed asset investment growth, as well as the unemployment rate. Compared to the low base seen in April last year, market watchers largely expect economic indicators to reflect a pickup in growth.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast industrial output would grow 10.1 percent year-on-year in April, after a 3.9 percent expansion the previous month. They are also seeing retail sales rise 20.1% in the month after the economy saw a 10.6% jump in March.

The RBA meeting minutes as well as the first quarter wage price index will be released on Wednesday and Thursday respectively.

New Zealand will unveil its annual budget for this year on Thursday, which its finance minister described as focused on returning to a “more sustainable fiscal position”.

The Philippine central bank will meet and is widely expected to keep its policy interest rate unchanged at 6.25% on Thursday, especially after the economy saw a slight drop in inflation earlier this month.

If the central bank pauses the rate hike cycle, it will be the first since March 2022.

– Jihe Lee

Consumers became more pessimistic in May as persistently high inflation and problems in the banking industry weighed on sentiment.

The University of Michigan survey of consumers showed a reading of 57.7 for the month, down from 63.5 in April and below the Dow Jones consensus estimate of 63.

The one-year inflation forecast has now fallen to 4.5% but has risen in the five-year forecast to 3.2%, which is equal to the highest level since June 2008.

– Jeff Cox

Bitcoin is on track to end the week down 10.6%, making it its worst week since Nov. 11, in the days after the FTX crash, according to coin metrics.

It was last trading down more than 1% at $26,416.31. Earlier, it reached a low of 26,138.19%, the lowest since March 17. The crypto asset fell all week as investors weighed a host of negative developments, including:

• A false warning indicating that the US government is moving Bitcoin for a possible sell-off, triggering a wave of long liquidations;
• network congestion and high fees, which led to Binance pausing bitcoin withdrawals;
• Market makers Jump and Jane Street announced a decline in cryptocurrency operations in the US, under the pressure of regulatory crackdowns and adding to the existing cryptocurrency liquidity problem,
• Uncertainties surrounding the US debt ceiling and Federal Reserve policy.

Bitcoin finished lower or less than 1% high over the past six days. This in and of itself can influence mood, said Yuya Hasegawa, a cryptocurrency market analyst at Japan’s bitcoin exchange Bitbank.

– Tanaya McHale

More interest rate increases may be needed if economic data does not show more convincing signs that inflation is falling, Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman said Friday.

“If inflation remains high and the labor market remains tight, then additional monetary policy tightening is likely to be appropriate to achieve a sufficiently constrained monetary policy stance to reduce inflation over time,” Baumann said in prepared remarks for the speech in Frankfurt, Germany.

Although consumer and producer price indices this week showed that the annual pace of inflation eased slightly in April, the central bank official said those numbers, along with last week’s non-farm payrolls report, “did not provide consistent evidence that inflation It’s on a downward trajectory.”

– Jeff Cox