The Opening Bell: Where currencies start on Monday, July 20, 2015

By Dan Bell

The NZDUSD opens this morning at 0.6515. Still just above the 6 year lows reached late last week.

All eyes this week will be on the RBNZ Cash rate announcement at 9am Thursday morning. The market has currently priced in a 25 basis point cut in the OCR with a minority of forecasts calling for a 50 point cut.

On Friday night, US Inflation data came in on expectations at +0.3% . However a member of the US Federal Reserve said that ‘US Inflation remains too low to raise interest rates’. Other US data saw housing starts and building permits surge in June, driven by a jump in demand for apartments and condos.

German lawmakers on Friday gave their approval to open talks for a new bailout for Greece, a crucial backing for the controversial proposal that averted an imminent exit of Greece from the euro area. The EU also announced that everything was in place to begin negotiations for a fresh loan for the country. European Commission Vice President said that the 7.16 billion euro bridge-loan approved on Thursday will reach Greece by Monday. He also suggested that the new bailout program for the country would be ready by August.

WTI Crude Oil was down again to 50.89 per barrel on the Iran export outlook.

Equities were relatively quiet on Friday. Google drove the Nasdaq to all time highs after it rose +16%on Friday.

World equity markets are in positive territory this morning:
Dow  -0.2%, S&P 500 +0.1%, FTSE -0.3%, DAX -0.3%, CAC +0.06%, Nikkei +0.25%, Shanghai +3.39%, 

NZDUSD           0.6515       0.1%
NZDEUR           0.6011       0.4%
NZDGBP           0.4172       0.0%
NZDJPY            80.78         0.0%
NZDAUD           0.8833       0.5%
NZDCAD           0. 8455      0.0% 

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Dan Bell is the senior currency strategist at HiFX in Auckland. You can contact him here »