The fate of the UK’s Brexit deal, an interest rate call by the European Central Bank and an election in Canada will headline a busy week of geopolitical developments and economic news.
Earnings season is also in full swing, with Amazon and Microsoft among the list of major companies due to report financial results.
Here’s what to watch.
Brexit
The UK parliament will hold a Saturday session for the first time in more than three decades to debate and vote on the withdrawal agreement reached by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government and the EU.
It remained unclear if the deal will garner the votes necessary for ratification. Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party, which has 10 MPs, has said it does not support it. If the agreement fails to win support in parliament, a law passed last month requires the government to request another delay.
Sterling, whose gains this week have been capped by doubts the Brexit deal will pass, could rally next week if Mr Johnson wins enough support.
“Amid the optimism about a deal, it is important to remember that the agreement still has to be agreed to by the EU27 heads of state as well as the UK parliament,” UBS said.
“While the ultimate outcome remains uncertain, we retain our overweight position in sterling versus the US dollar in our FX strategy. If a convincing deal is reached we could see GBPUSD rallying to 1.35.”
Central banks
The ECB will announce its monetary policy decision October 24, the final meeting of Mario Draghi’s term as president.
Economists don’t expect any changes to rates following the ECB’s decision last month to cut rates and resume its bond-buying program.
“We don’t expect to see any changes to ECB monetary policy at its upcoming meeting,” RBC Capital Markets said. “We instead see Mario Draghi using his last meeting as president, before his 8-year term comes to an end on October 31st, as a final call for help from Europe’s governments to loosen their fiscal purse strings.”
Rate decisions will also come from the central banks of Russia, Turkey and Indonesia.
Canada votes
Justin Trudeau will have the fight of his political life next week when Canadians vote in federal elections.
The prime minister is seeking a second term, but polls show his Liberals may not maintain their majority in parliament. Odds that the Andrew Scheer-led Conservatives win more seats than the Liberals have risen to more than 40 per cent from 13 per cent less than a month ago, according to poll aggregator 338Canada.
Mr Trudeau has been dogged by controversies, including the SNC-Lavalin case in which the country’s ethics watchdog said he broke conflict-of-interest law.
Mr Scheer, a fiscal conservative, has pledged to return the federal government to a balanced budget within five years.
“Between a Liberal-led minority and a Conservative-led minority, we expect the first one to be more CAD-negative,” ING said.
Zuckerberg in Washington
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg will testify before the House Financial Services Committee on October 23.
The hearing was called to discuss Facebook’s cryptocurrency plans. Libra has faced scepticism from lawmakers and regulators who have voiced concerns that it could pose a risk to the global financial system and make it more difficult to combat money laundering.
Several of the companies that had partnered with Facebook to back Libra, including eBay, PayPal, Visa and Mastercard, have walked away from the project.
Earnings
Investors will get a flurry of earnings to digest in the coming week, including results from heavyweights Amazon, Microsoft and Visa.
Boeing is set to report earnings amid fallout from the grounding of the 737 Max jet. Earnings from Ford and Tesla will provide a look at the health of the auto industry. UPS and Caterpillar will draw attention as US economic bellwethers.
UBS, Barclays, McDonald’s, Procter & Gamble, Verizon, Anheuser-Busch and Twitter are among the other notable companies on the earnings schedule.
