Market News Today
Equities recover from significant falls, Powell pushes for inflation, USD remains heavy, yields cool from highs, NZD spikes following RBNZ. Commodity currencies & Sterling at 3-year highs, Copper at near 10-year high, Oil slipped from 1-year highs. Gold holds over $1800. BTC up from under 45k to recover 50K. German GDP beats at 0.3%. Overnight – Japanese Inflation slips, ASO talks weak Q1 GDP and need for more Bonds. Nikkei closed lower -1.6%.
The Pound and the New Zealand Dollar surged to fresh trend highs, which along with a side theme of yen weakness, provided the main action during Asian trading ahead of the London interbank open. Cable spiked by some 180 pips from yesterday’s New York closing level in posting a fresh 36-month high at 1.4234. The pair subsequently settled lower, to the upper 1.4100s, which still left Sterling with a near 1% gain on the day. At the same time, EURGBP dropped sharply, to a one-year low at 0.8541, while GBPJPY stormed above the 150.00 level for the first time since May 2018.
Stop orders and option related demand was reported. It’s not clear if there was a specific catalyst, though the Telegraph newspaper reported British government sources saying that Covid restrictions could be lifted sooner than laid out in PM Johnson’s roadmap, which was outlined earlier in the week, if “real world data on the effect of vaccines is better than expected.” So far the data has been encouraging, and the UK’s ahead-of-the-pack vaccine rollout has been bullish factor for the Pound. The UK economy and the Pound underperformed peers during the height of the first lockdowns last year, and the vista of reopening has been having the opposite effect, especially with Brexit uncertainty having finally ended.
The Kiwi Dollar, meanwhile, also rallied, after initially dipping in the immediate wake of the RBNZ policy announcement. The antipodean central bank left the cash rate unchanged at 0.25%, as had been widely anticipated, while the main takeaway from the statement and Governor Orr’s press conference is that policymakers now see the next move as being a tightening, although this was framed in context of uncertainty, ongoing risks to growth etc. Once market participants discerned this, NZDUSD rallied briskly to a new 34-month high at 0.7384.
As for the Yen, the currency posted across-the-board declines. USDJPY consequentially lifted to a two-day at 105.58, while AUDJPY and NZDJPY printed new 26-month highs, and CADJPY a one-year peak. EURJPY jumped to within 15 pips of recent 26-month highs, while EURUSD remained rooted in a 20-pip range in the mid 1.2100s. The other dollar bloc currencies, outside the case of the New Zealand Dollar, posted fresh highs, despite weaker global stock markets and softer commodity prices today. AUDUSD pegged a three-year high at 0.7945, while USDCAD dropped to a 34-month low at 1.2557. Equity markets remained under pressure, with Fed chair Powell not doing quite enough to damp down yields during his Senate testimony yesterday, while a rise in stock-trading stamp duty was in part behind a steep decline in Chinese stocks today.
Today – US new home sales, DoEs, BoE’s Haldane, Bailey, Vlieghe, Haskel, Broadbent, Fed’s Powell, Brainard, Clarida.
Biggest (FX) Mover @ (07:30 GMT) GBPJPY (+0.73%) Rallied from break of 20MA yesterday at 148.00 to breach 150.00 earlier. R3 149.20, trades at 14960 now. Faster MAs aligned and trending higher, RSI 80.00 & OB, MACD histogram & signal line aligned higher with a big break of 0 line yesterday. Stochs. down from OB zone. H1 ATR 0.2630, Daily ATR 0.9350.
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Stuart Cowell
Head Market Analyst
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