The NZDUSD opens at 0.6747 (mid-rate) this morning.
Just before 9am yesterday morning Fonterra confirmed its farm gate milk price for the 2016/17 season is $4.25 per kg of milk solids and reaffirmed its estimate of the current season 2015/16 is NZD 3.90/kg milk solid. The NZD was immediately lower and never recovered throughout the day.
NZ Finance Minister Bill English delivered the National led governments eighth budget yesterday afternoon. The NZD finished the session with a bid tone but it wasn’t enough to get back to the level of yesterday’s open.
The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week, moving back to near cycle lows as the labour markets remains healthy and the economy regains momentum after stumbling in the first quarter. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits declined 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 268,000 for the week ended May 21.
U.S. Durable Goods Orders shot up by 3.4% in April after climbing by an upwardly revised 1.9% in March. Economists had expected orders to rise by just 0.3% compared to the 0.8% increase that had been reported for the previous month.
U.S. Pending home sales increased 1.4% in March for the second consecutive month and the index has increased year-over-year for 19 consecutive months and is at its highest reading since May 2015.
UK GDP in volume terms was estimated to have increased by 0.4% between Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2015 and Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2016, unrevised from the preliminary estimate of GDP published on 27 April 2016. This is the 13th consecutive quarter of positive growth since Quarter 1 2013.
Global equity markets are broadly higher again today: Dow -0.03%, S&P 500 +0.10%, FTSE +0.04%, DAX +0.66%, CAC +0.69%, Nikkei +0.09%, Shanghai 0.26%.
Gold prices are down $2 trading at $1221 an ounce this morning, WTI Crude Oil is down 0.6% currently trading at $49.37.
Current indicative rates:
NZDUSD 0.6747 -0.3%
NZDEUR 0.6029 -0.6%
NZDGBP 0.4601 0.0%
NZDJPY 74.04 -0.
NZDAUD 0.9349 -0.6%
NZDCAD 0.8761 -0.7%
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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
This is kind of a bizarre article. The NZD fell from .677 to under .670 following Fonterra, but has since recovered to over .675. That looks like a pretty strong recovery to me.
Meanwhile the market took the NZ budget, considered unimpressive locally, as great news for the NZD and enthusiastically bought it up, and basically ignored the better-than-expected US durable goods news - again the NZ rose immediately afterward.
The NZD is incredibly stubbornly high, while the market is very cynical of any positive USD news.
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