Last week was an important one for the market mostly because of the US mid-term elections and the Federal Reserve. This week, the market may be relatively calm, with no major central bank expected to release its interest rates decision. This article will look at the biggest news that traders will look at this week.

Crude Oil

Over the weekend, Saudi Arabia announced that it will reduce crude supplies by 500K barrels per day. This was important news that saw the price of crude rise in the Asian session. The news was announced by the Energy minister who said that the country was anticipating low demand for the sector. This is likely to lead to confrontation between Saudi and Russia as OPEC+1 oil ministers meet. It will also likely attract criticism from the US president. On Wednesday, OPEC will release its monthly outlook that will show investors the state of the oil market. On the same day, EIA will release its inventory numbers. Last week, the numbers showed that inventories from the United States rose by 5.7 million barrels.

UK Data

This will be an important week for the United Kingdom. On Tuesday, the country will release the employment numbers. The average wage (ex-bonus) is expected to show that wages rose by 3.1%, which will be unchanged from the previous month. Wages plus bonus are expected to show an increase by 3.0%, which will be higher by 2.7%. The unemployment rate is expected to remain at 4.0% while the claimant count is expected to improve to 4.3K from September’s 18.5K.

ON Wednesday, the country will release its CPI numbers. These numbers are expected to show that the CPI increased by an annualized rate of 2.5%, which will be higher than the 2.4% increase in September. The core CPI, which strips the volatile energy and food prices is expected to remain unchanged at 1.9%. The PPI input, which measures the change in price of goods and raw materials purchased by manufacturers is expected to rise by 9.6%, which will be lower than the previous increase of 10.3%.