As financial markets gear back up after the Christmas holidays Wednesday is due to be a quiet one in the company diary – though there's lots of macroeconomic reports scheduled.
This includes minutes from the last Federal Reserve policy meeting, plus a raft of data, including MBA mortgage applications, ISM manufacturing PMI, ISM prices, Redbook index, crude oil inventories and JOLTS job quits.
For the UK, the latest grocery market share figures and an update on supermarket price inflation will be released by Kantar, with economists and households looking for food price inflation to continue falling, while supermarket investors are anticipating record sales.
The last UK grocery report before Christmas revealed food price inflation fell again in November, with annual grocery inflation slowing to 9.1% in the four weeks to 26 November from 9.7% a month earlier.
Kantar predicted take-home supermarket sales from the likes of Tesco PLC (LSE:TSCO), J Sainsbury PLC (LSE:SBRY) and their rivals will surpass £13 billion for the first time ever during the month, with Friday 22 December set to be the busiest day for festive grocery shopping.
The two biggest supermarkets continued their fightback in the battle for market share in the previous month, with Sainsbury’s grabbing its largest market share gain in over a decade, while Tesco enjoyed the fifth month in a row making market share gains.
Today we also heard from Aldi and Lidl, both of which unveiled record trading in the UK for the festive period as higher prices drove consumers to discounters.