The week ahead: Springing into a soft landing?

Nothing says spring more than Easter and the start of the baseball season, and this week will provide a basketful of employment data with the announcement of the March unemployment numbers as well as average hourly earnings. This may give Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell something to think about when he prepares his speech at Stanford this week. Investors still recovering from having their March Madness brackets busted are hoping to be cheered up by Powell talking about rate cuts.

• Manufacturing purchasing managers' index for March will be released on April 1.
• February JOLTS Job Openings, a survey done by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to help measure job vacancies, comes out on April 2.
• The 2024 Sohn Investment Conference will be held on April 3 in New York featuring speakers including Karen Karniol-Tambour, co-chief investment officer at Bridgewater, and Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn.
• Initial jobless claims will be reported on April 4.
• P&I’s Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Ablan has a LinkedIn Live interview with Neel Kashkari, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, on April 4.
• The March unemployment rate will be announced April 5.
• Average hourly earnings for March come out on April 5.

• Several key SEC officials, including Chair Gary Gensler, Commissioner Mark Uyeda and Commissioner Hester Peirce, will speak at an event hosted by the Practising Law Institute April 2-3.
• On April 3, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will speak at an event hosted by the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

• The University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy will judge the three finalists of a contest for graduate students to propose solutions to address the city of Chicago's woefully underfunded pension plans on April 3. The panel of judges includes Dominic Garcia, former CIO of New Mexico Public Employees’ Retirement System and current chief pension investment strategist at CBRE Investment Management.
• Managers and consultants will reveal estimated funding ratios for U.S. corporate pension plans for March this week.
• The Louisiana Teachers’ Retirement System, Baton Rouge, holds its board meeting on April 4.

• The German consumer price index for March will be released on April 2.
• On April 3, the EU will announce preliminary CPI for March.