NZD: Asia Wrap - Struggling To Hold Above 0.6000
The NZD/USD had a range of 0.5986 - 0.6007 in the Asia-Pac session, going into the London open trading around 0.5995. The NZD has drifted a little lower in a quiet Asian session, with US Stocks giving back their small overnight gains.
- (Bloomberg) - “Data since the April meeting have shown a softer labor market. Inflation has perked up but not enough to stop the RBNZ from proceeding with a 25-bp rate cut.”
- “There is significant downside risk to the growth outlook stemming from the global trade war. Even so, the 1Q CPI outcome is likely to see the RBNZ maintain its current OCR projections for only modest rate cuts.”
- Markets continue to price in 25bps of easing for tomorrow's meeting, with 64bps expected by November 2025.
- The NZD continues to trade in a 0.5850/0.6050 range, can it find 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: none. 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 1.0803 - 1.0824, currently trading 1.0820. A sustained break above 1.0930 is needed to turn the focus higher, until then expect supply on bounces.
Fig 1: AUD/NZD 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."
