NZD: Asia Wrap - Looking To Break Higher
The NZD/USD had a range of 0.5981 - 0.6032 in the Asia-Pac session, going into the London open trading around 0.6020. The USD has opened weak again in early Monday morning trading in Asia with another leg lower.
- The RBNZ meets this week when the decision is announced on Wednesday with updated staff forecasts in the Monetary Policy Statement. It will be followed by a press conference which will be Hawkesby’s first as governor. The MPC is widely expected to cut rates 25bp to 3.25% bringing cumulative easing this cycle to 225bp. The OCR profile will be a focus as well as CPI given recent inflation developments.
- (Bloomberg) -- BNZ publishes new residential mortgage lending data for April, on its website. Lending to all borrowers NZ$7.58b, First-home buyers borrowed NZ$1.54b or 20.4% of total, Investors borrowed NZ$1.52b or 20% of total, There were 19,289 new mortgage commitments — down 12% m/m: RBNZ.
- The NZD has been bid for most of the Asian session benefitting from the broad USD sell-off and more fresh selling in USD/ASIA.
- The NZD continues to trade in a 0.5850/0.6050 range, could this latest round of USD selling provide it with the momentum to break this week ? As the “sell America” trade gathers pace.
- The support back towards 0.5800 has held very well, and while this continues to hold expect buyers to be around on dips. The first target is the highs just above 0.6000, a break here could provide the spark for the next leg higher.
- Options : Closest significant option expiries for NY cut, based on DTCC data: 0.5980(NZD513m May 26), Upcoming Close Strikes : 0.5725(NZD1.09b May 28)
- CFTC Data showed Asset managers maintaining their shorts, while the leveraged community added a decent clip back to their own short.
AUD/NZD range for the session has been 1.0819 - 1.0857, currently trading 1.0830. A sustained break above 1.0930 is needed to turn the focus higher, until then expect supply on bounces.
Fig 1: NZD/USD Spot Daily Chart
Source: MNI - Market News/Bloomberg
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US TSYS: Extraordinary Measures And Cash Look Sufficient To Head Off X-Date
Treasury has about $164B in "extraordinary measures" available as of April 23 to avoid hitting the debt limit, per its regular report out Friday. That's out of a maximum total of $375B (they have used $211B).
- With Treasury cash looking healthy (around $600B), that's a fair amount of dry powder to get through the summer months to wait out the debt limit impasse. Tax receipts have looked strong with tariff revenues also starting to boost cash flows, further reducing the near-term urgency to adjust bond issuance.
- This has also helped push back analyst “x-date” expectations to later in the summer/September. We expect to hear from Treasury about its own x-date assumptions next week.
US TSYS: Treasury Market Trading Stayed Orderly In April: Fed Report
Liquidity across financial markets including the Treasury market deteriorated after President Trump's April 2 reciprocal tariffs announcement but market functioning was generally orderly, according to the Federal Reserve's semiannual report on financial stability, released Friday. (PDF link is here)
- Treasury market liquidity has been poor for years and yields were particularly volatile in early April, contributing to a deterioration in market liquidity, the Fed said.
- Nevertheless "trading remained orderly, and markets continued to function without serious disruption," according to the report, which looked at information available as of April 11.
FED: Ex-Gov Warsh: Fed Has Failed To Satisfy Price Stability Remit
From our Washington Policy Team - Some fairly sharp words today from ex-Fed Governor Warsh on the central bank (who for what it's worth is seen by betting markets as by far the frontrunner for the next Fed Chair):
- The best way for the Federal Reserve to safeguard its independence is for policymakers to avoid expanding the institution's role over time, including wading into policy areas that are outside its core mission, former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh, a leading contender to replace Jerome Powell as chair next year, said Friday.
- "I strongly believe in the operational independence of monetary policy as a wise political economy decision. And I believe that Fed independence is chiefly up to the Fed," Warsh said in a speech at a Group of Thirty event on the sidelines of the IMF meetings. "Institutional drift has coincided with the Fed’s failure to satisfy an essential part of its statutory remit, price stability. It has also contributed to an explosion of federal spending." His speech made no mention of Trump's tariffs or the appropriate monetary policy to deal with them.
- He said the ideas of data dependence and forward guidance widely adopted by Fed officials are not especially useful and might even be counterproductive.
"We should care little about two numbers to the right of the decimal point in the latest government release. Breathlessly awaiting trailing data from stale national accounts -- subject to significant, subsequent revision -- is evidence of false precision and analytic complacency," he said.
"Near-term forecasting is another distracting Fed preoccupation. Economists are not immune to the frailties of human nature. Once policymakers reveal their economic forecast, they can become prisoners of their own words. Fed leaders would be well-served to skip opportunities to share their latest musings."
