US retail sales are due at the bottom of the hour in an important check on the consumer. The consensus is that sales rose 0.5% in May, with the ex-autos number matching that. For the market, the most-important number is the control group, which excludes autos, gasoline and building materials. It’s expected up a healthy 0.4% m/m but not that retail sales numbers aren’t adjusted for inflation.

On a year-over-year basis, sales were up 4.87% in April, which just barely exceeded inflation.

The market is unlikely to make a big moved based on retail sales for two reasons:

1) Warsh is coming up later. The 2 pm ET FOMC decision and press conference 30 minutes later are big events and most market participants will be reluctant to chase any miss.

2) It’s a bit stale. Gasoline has been eating up a larger chunk of US wallets due to the war but crude is back to $76 and that’s going to be a gamechanger for June data and consumer confidence, if it holds.

At the moment, USD/JPY is down 15 pips to 160.30 and is a place to watch today due to the Fed decision and the chance of intervention.

Notably, Bank of America — based on its card data — is forecasting sales up 0.8% with the control group up 0.7%.

This article was written by Adam Button at investinglive.com.