NZD & Sterling
The New Zealand Dollar posted a fresh four-month high versus the Australian Dollar, while NZDUSD and NZDJPY saw two-day highs. A shift in RBNZ policy expectations and an associated rise in NZ yields have been underpinning the kiwi. The 10-year US T-note yield advantage relative to the NZ 10-year yield has narrowed by some 15 bps since late November. It is expected that this trend will taper out at some point, as RBNZ monetary policy is historically sensitive to movements in the currency. The longest rallying kiwi pair is the NZDCAD which is now in its 29th day and 280 pips (4.6 x ATR) north of the key 20-day simple moving average, 19 days over the 50-day moving average and 6 days over the important long term 200-day moving average and psychological 0.8600. Next Resistance is R3 and the upper Bollinger band at 0.8750. MACD and RSI both remain positive.
Elsewhere in the forex realm, most dollar pairings and associated cross rates have remained in narrow ranges, holding within respective Monday ranges in thinned-out year-end conditions. EURUSD has remained particularly directionally challenged, seeing less than a 10-pip range during the Asia-Pacific session until the entry of the London interbank market. USDJPY managed a 12-pip range. The stellar US jobs report of last Friday has had little lasting impact on the Dollar. Markets seem non-committal, partly due to seasonal considerations and partly amid a certain anxiety ahead of the weekend’s deadline for the US to hike tariffs on a further $160 bln worth of Chinese goods. A delay in this deadline is possible, if a phase-1 deal fails to come to fruition, while an implementation of the new tariffs would mark an escalation in the trade war and cause a significant risk-off response in illiquid year-end global markets.
Sterling has settled after rallying yesterday, unaffected by the slight dip in GDP and the worse than expected trade balance, Cable holds the 1.3150 pivot point. Markets have factored in a Conservative victory with an outright majority at Thursday’s UK general election, based on public opinion polling, though political pundits have been stressing that undecided votes are making this election tricky to call. Polls have suggested most undecided voters are people who voted for Labour in 2017, suggesting there is a possibility for an unexpectedly strong showing for Labour, however, the surge in tactical voting to prevent a Johnson majority is difficult to calculate, and there have been no clear signs of this. The key YouGov MRP opinion poll will be updated later today; last time (November 27) it predicted a Conservative majority of 67 seats.
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Stuart Cowell
Head Market Analyst
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