By Dan Bell
The NZD/USD opens at 0.8220/0.8240 this morning- up 50 basis points in early morning trading following better than expected China PMI numbers released yesterday afternoon.
The China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing said Sunday that its purchasing managers index, or PMI, rose 2.1 points to 53.1 in March, up from February's 51.0 and January's 50.5 (exp. 50.9).
Remember, everyone thought China was falling off a cliff last week after the ‘unofficial’ HSBC estimate came in much weaker than expected.
US stocks finished in positive territory on Friday with the S&P 500 up 0.37%. Commodities were also up with the CRB Index up 0.82%.
NZD/AUD spiked to 0.79 on Friday night but has come off these highs this morning as the AUD outperforms on the China PMI data- AUD/USD is up almost a cent this morning already!
Against the other major cross rates we open around 0.6150 EUR, 0.5130 GBP, 68.10 JPY.
Not much to report from NZ this week but a heavy week of data from Australia. The focus will be on the RBA tomorrow afternoon but we also get Building Approvals today, Retail Sales tomorrow, and Trade Balance numbers on Wednesday.
Offshore we get the European Central Bank and Bank of England interest rate announcements. From the US the focus will be on US Employment Numbers released on Friday night NZT but we also get ISM Manufacturing PMI on Tuesday and FOMC Meeting minutes on Wednesday morning.
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Dan Bell is the senior currency strategist at HiFX in Auckland. You can contact him here
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1 Comments
"I would prefer to take Bernanke at his word: “Central banks and other regulators should try to anticipate and defuse threats to financial stability…” To begin with, there’s his important qualification “as much as possible.” And today he shows nothing but dogged determination to move forward with his “activist” (inflationist) monetary experiment." Read Article
USD is destined to fall against other forrmer stores of wealth. And anyway it's the old story of don't bet against the Fed.
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