The Day Ahead: Focus on US Data and Events

After two trading days that have been either devoid of market movers or predominantly focused on overseas considerations, Wednesday offers a homecoming for domestic data's importance.  That said, though the outright number of data sets is limited in the overnight session, Industrial Production for the EU is big enough to be a consideration (not as much of a consideration as it could be if it were, say, a February report instead of January, but not inconsequential).

The meat and potatoes of the domestic session is clearly the 8:30am data with the relatively mighty Retail Sales figures leading the charge.  Import/Export prices will be reported at the same time but they'll only serve to take up valuable screen space and reading time--effectively getting in the way of a quicker assessment of the extent to which increased fuel costs distorts the headline.  To that end, "Retail Sales" proper is seen coming in at +0.5 while the figure drops to +0.2 excluding gas and heavily freight dependent autos and building materials. 

More second tier data hits at 10am with Business Inventories, but by then we'll already be getting into anticipatory stance for the afternoon's key consideration in the form of the 10yr Treasury Auction.  Even 10's aren't quite the dramatic market movers that they used to be before Fed Treasury buying, but they're significantly more relevant than yesterday's 3yr Note offering.  Wednesday's wild-card will be played by the possible announcement of democratic budget proposal some time during the trading session.