Tomorrow's Macro Roadmap: RBA’s Bullock Speech and US Consumer Confidence on Fed Eve
Macro: The Big Picture
The FOMC begins its July meeting on Tuesday and announces the first of three G7 decisions on Wednesday evening CET, with the Bank of England on Thursday and the Bank of Japan on Friday.
Tuesday itself is a second-tier data day. The session opens with Governor Bullock's Anika Foundation speech at 05:05 CET on the eve of Australia's Q2 CPI, runs through French consumer confidence at 08:45 CET and Spain's Q2 labour data at 09:00 CET, and finishes with a dense US afternoon, the advance goods trade balance at 14:30 CET, house prices at 15:00 CET, Conference Board consumer confidence at 16:00 CET and a 7-year note auction at 19:00 CET. An OPEC meeting is also scheduled for 12:00 CET.
Key Earnings: the week's reporting peak builds through Tuesday, with Boeing, Coca-Cola and Visa in the US, Barclays, Mercedes-Benz, Unilever, GSK, Philips, Safran, Air Liquide and EssilorLuxottica in Europe, and Singapore Airlines, Hindustan Unilever and Larsen & Toubro in Asia. The mega-cap test follows midweek, Microsoft and Meta on Wednesday, Apple and Amazon on Thursday, with capex plans for AI the dominant question after Alphabet raised its spending forecast.
Data Release Previews
Euro Area: French consumer confidence at 08:45 CET is the euro-area session's main sentiment read, with consensus looking for a tick up to 85 despite the renewed energy shock.
INSEE's French consumer confidence gauge for July is released at 08:45 CET. Confidence stood at 84 in June and consensus looks for 85. The print is the first big-four national sentiment reading since the European Commission's flash consumer confidence gauge for the euro area rose 1.7 points in July, a surprise given the renewed rise in fuel prices, so the question is whether French households mirror that resilience. Analyst forecasts straddle the consensus, from a further improvement in line with the euro-area flash to an outright fall below the June level. Some also caution that the July survey window may only partly capture the latest leg higher in energy prices, which would flatter the reading and defer any sentiment hit to August.
United States: Conference Board consumer confidence at 16:00 CET is expected to improve, but analysts are split on whether the oil shock has yet to hit households.
The Conference Board's July consumer confidence index is released at 16:00 CET. The index rose to 91.2 in June, and the consensus sits at 92.2. June's gain was driven by the expectations component while the present-situation gauge fell, and the labour-market differential, the share calling jobs hard to get less the share calling them plentiful, rose to a cycle high.
Analysts are split between the two sides of consensus. One camp expects gasoline prices and Strait-of-Hormuz headlines to have cut into July sentiment and buying intentions, while others point to record household wealth and a still-low level of layoffs and look for a further improvement. The disconnect between weak survey sentiment and resilient actual spending remains the structural backdrop, with equity wealth doing much of the work supporting US consumption this year.
Bloomberg survey: median 92.4, range 90.5 to 95 (as of 27-07-2026).
Editor's Note: CB consumer confidence is the only Tuesday print with the chance to move the rates market on Fed eve. A soft headline with a rising labour differential would strengthen the hold-and-wait majority case a day before the decision and could trim September hike pricing, while an upside print largely confirms what the hawks already argue and leaves Wednesday's calculus intact. Watch the labour-market differential as much as the headline; it is the component with the unemployment-rate signal.
Central Bank Speech Previews
RBA Governor Michele Bullock delivers her annual Anika Foundation address, titled 'Monetary Policy in an Era of Shocks', at 05:05 CET (13:05 AEST) in Sydney. The speech is livestreamed and includes media Q&A. It is her first set-piece since the June Board meeting, and it comes the day before Australia's Q2 CPI and two weeks before the 11 August rate decision, which will be accompanied by the RBA's refreshed August forecasts. At her most recent appearance, the 16 June post-meeting media conference, the RBA held the cash rate at 4.35% after 75bp of increases this year, and Bullock said 'I want to be very clear that inflation remains too high.' She confirmed the Board did not consider a hike at that meeting but kept the door open, saying the decision 'does not rule out further tightening in monetary policy if that is what is required' and, on the rates market's light pricing at the time, 'I can't rule out that if inflation doesn't respond in the way we expect it to do then we might have to do more.' She said second-round effects from fuel and commodity costs were already visible in new dwelling costs and in business liaison, called the labour market still 'a bit tight' with unemployment forecast to drift to about 4.7%, put the economy's supply-constrained speed limit near 2% growth, and noted underlying inflation was running 'dead on' the RBA's forecast, with inflation not returning to target until mid-2028.