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Welcome to today’s Money Minute – in which we preview the big stories of the week ahead in just 60 seconds.
The latest UK unemployment figures are out on Tuesday. Unemployment has remained consistently near record low levels in recent months, while annual wage growth has picked up sharply, coming in at just under 4% in June.
While the Bank of England is unlikely to make any moves while Brexit remains unresolved, members of its interest-rate setting committee will be monitoring wage inflation particularly closely.
On Thursday we get the biggest event of the week – the European Central Bank announces its latest decision on monetary policy. Recent weak economic data, particularly in Germany, has convinced the market that the ECB will take its key interest rate even deeper into negative territory, from its current record low level of minus 0.4%.
Outgoing ECB head Mario Draghi is also expected to indicate that the central bank will announce more stimulus – perhaps a new money-printing programme – at the next meeting in October.
Draghi has a tendency to underpromise and overdeliver, and if he manages to do this again, markets are likely to send the euro lower. But if he can’t convince markets that he’s sufficiently dovish, the euro is likely to gain.
That’s your 60 second update – have a good week.