MNI Gilt Week Ahead - November 16, 2020

• There are five different MPC speakers scheduled to make public appearances this week while Brexit talks will move closer to the end game. On top of this we will receive retail sales, inflation and public finance data.
• Brexit talks will continue this week. There has been little publicly reported progress recently with the same key issues continuing to dominate negotiations. A number of media outlets are now reporting that a deal in the coming days or this week is now unlikely, although a number of others have reported comments made on Friday that a deal could be around 10 days away. After a lot of upheaval in Number 10 with Dominic Cummings leaving his post and Boris Johnson now having to self isolate after coming into contact with an MP who has tested positive for Covid-19, there are question marks over whether there will be any knock on effects to Brexit negotiations. Recall that Cummings ran the vote leave campaign and had previously been expected to remain in his position until Brexit had been fully completed and a deal had been finalised (or until the end of the transition period if no deal was forthcoming).
• In terms of MPC speakers, we will hear from Tenreyro and Haskel on Monday. Tenreyro's webinar is on the monetary toolkit and it will be interesting to see whether she elaborates on her views on negative rates given that she is one of the members that is seen to be most in favour and often speaks about the positive experiences of negative rates in Europe. Haskel will be a panellist discussing AI technology in the post-Covid recovery. Governor Bailey is due to speak twice – on Tuesday and Wednesday but has made a number of appearances recently so is unlikely to surprise. Ramsden gives a public lecture for Nottingham University on Tuesday while Haldane speaks at The CityUK's National Conference on Wednesday.
• On the data front, inflation data on Wednesday is unlikely to move the market much (other than potentially RPI data for linkers). The biggest release of the week will be retail sales for October, although even this data is still looking pretty outdated after England's second national lockdown began in November. Public finance data will be watched on Friday as it will be the last release ahead of the OBR's next forecasts which are due to be released on 25 November alongside the Spending Review but will probably still not give huge amounts of new information about the remit update which will also be due on 25 November.

GiltWeekAhead16112020.pdf