The UK's shop price inflation edged down to 1% year over year in April from 1.2% in March, the British Retail Consortium said Tuesday.
The consensus estimate for the month was 1.5%.
BRC Chief Executive Helen Dickinson attributed the increase to discounts offered by retailers on certain Easter goods to encourage spending.
The total profits of China's industrial enterprises in the first quarter jumped 15.5% year on year to 1.696 trillion yuan, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday.Profits in the mining industry in the period between January and March rose 16.2% from a year earlier to 256.33 billion yuan, while that of the manufacturing industry climbed 19.1% to 1.238 billion yuan.The utilities industry's profits slipped 3.2% year on year to 201.3 billion yuan.Moreover, the profits of the technology industry and the non-ferrous metal industry both rose 1.2 times. The chemical industry's profit jumped 54.5% from a year earlier and the coal mining industry inched 6.7% higher.Profits within the petroleum and coal industry swung from loss to profit, but the oil and gas extraction industry slipped 1.4%.Other industries also fell, such as the electricity and heat industry ant the agricultural industry, which dropped 3.4% and 6%, respectively.
RBC Capital Markets said USD/CAD is likely to remain range-bound in the short term, as this week's data and geopolitical developments were not enough to shake the pair out of recent ranges.The pair is nearly flat on the week, as this week's data (CA CPI, BoC Business Outlook Survey, US retail sales) and the stream of Iran-related headlines were not enough to shake the pair out of recent ranges, RBC said.RBC CAD Weekly Soundbites, noted a sharp leg lower below the 1.3500 area requires either 1) the US-CA rates spread to narrow more quickly than priced, cheapening the USD hedging costs, or 2) markets to attach a higher risk premium on US assets.RBC added that USD/CAD has been re-establishing its negative correlation to US equities after being 'risk-neutral' for much of the past year. This means USD/CAD is again acting like a natural hedge under risk-off - whether or not this continues will matter from a hedging incentive perspective.From a technical standpoint, RBC's George Davis said key trendline support at 1.3647 has held this week as the daily studies moved to oversold levels.A daily close below 1.3647 would end the corrective phase that has been in place since late January and favour a re-test of this year's lows at 1.3526 and 1.3482, RBC said.RBC added that resistance at 1.3799 and 1.3856 is expected to attract selling interest.
Cargo traffic at the Port of Los Angeles is expected to fall in the week ending May 9, according to data from the ship-tracking system Port Optimizer.A total of 73,542 20-foot equivalent units, a standardized measure of cargo capacity, are projected to reach the port in the week, the data showed. That volume reflects a roughly 34% decrease from the previous week and a 0.8% increase from a year earlier.Eighteen freight vessels are scheduled to arrive at the port in the week ending May 9, the data showed. That is fewer than the 19 vessels each during this week and the week ending May 2.