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Welcome to Friday’s Money Minute. In the UK today, keep an eye out for a trading update from JD Wetherspoon.
The pub group is well known for its founder’s unapologetic support for Brexit. Expect any news – particularly on the UK consumer spending outlook – to be reported through this prism.
Data on eurozone wage inflation comes out mid-morning. Now that the European Central Bank’s big meeting is over, investors will be paying more attention to what this figure says about the overall health of the eurozone economy.
In the US, we get a glimpse of how the all-important US consumer is feeling, when retail sales data for August comes out, followed by the latest reading from the Michigan consumer confidence index.
The US consumer’s desire to spend matters because consumer spending accounts for roughly two-thirds of US economic activity.
Given that the US is the most important economy in the world, that makes the US consumer perhaps the single most potent economic force in the world.
So let’s hope they still feel like splashing out.