FOREX: Tariff Letters Show Trump Not Shy of Surprising Markets
Jul-10 09:30
- As more tariff letters dropped late yesterday, markets were again caught offguard at Trump's willingness to surprise markets - this time by inflicting a 50% tariff rate on Brazil due to the country's pursuit of former President Bolsonaro, a key Trump ally. The local currency sold off aggressively, putting USD/BRL at new July highs - although the spillover into G10 FX was much more muted - however the brief spell of USD sales in response to the headline persists headed through to the NY crossover.
- For now, this keeps broader market conditions in step with the themes from earlier this week. AUD/USD remains firm, with an underlying bull trend aided by the recovery off weekly lows and the firm hold of 50-dma support at 0.6483. Further strength here would need to top 0.6590 resistance, a break above which puts the pair at YTD highs and resumes the underlying bull trend.
- While the USD Index is softer, it is still operating above the base in prices established earlier this month. The dominance of the USD downtrend posted off the early February has helped define price action across Trump's term so far - and that remains the order of markets for now. Any fresh catalysts this month (US CPI on July 15th, Fed decision on July 30th) will need to press the USD either back below the downtrendline (today at 97.083) or above the 50-dma at 98.913 to trigger fresh price action here.
- Weekly jobless claims data are the sole US data release due Thursday, with markets watching for another tick higher in initial jobless claims to 235k. The central bank speaker slate is busier, with ECB's Villeroy, BoE's Breeden and Fed's Musalem & Daly all set to speak.
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EURIBOR OPTIONS: ERU5 98.875 Calls Trading
Jun-10 09:23
ERU5 98.875 calls see 5K trading at 0.25, volume at that price up to 11.5K on the day now.
EGBS: Bund Futures Consolidate Early Rally; ECB Pullback Considered Corrective
Jun-10 09:16
Bund futures have consolidated the early rally, which came on the back of softer-than-expected UK labour market data and weak European equity sentiment. Futures are +36 ticks at 130.66, with initial resistance at 130.99 (yesterday’s high). The technical picture remains unchanged, with the ECB-driven pullback still appearing corrective - for now - and the trend condition remaining bullish.
- Regional headline flow has been light. ECB speakers (Villeroy, Rehn) have not shifted sentiment, nor did the stronger-than-expected June Sentix survey (0.2 vs -5.5 cons, -8.1 prior).
- The German curve has bull flattened, with 30-year Bund yields down 3bps and Schatz yields down 1bp. Germany will sell E4bln of the 2.40% Apr-30 Bobl at 1030BST.
- Meanwhile, the Netherlands sold 10-year DSLs earlier and the ESM is holding a E2bln WNG long 3-year syndication. Finland will sell RFGBs at 1100BST.
- 10-year EGB spreads to Bunds are within 1bp of yesterday’s closing levels. Overnight, French President Macron did not rule out another dissolution of the National Assembly to hold snap elections (he is legally allowed to do so as of July). While this has had limited impact on OAT spreads intraday (+1bps at 68bps), it serves as a reminder that French political (and fiscal) risks are still lurking in the background.
- Broader macro focus remains on the outcome of US-China trade talks, which have entered their second day.
UK DATA: Downward trend rather than the flash is the concern in payrolls data
Jun-10 09:13
- There has been a lot of discussion of how much to read into the huge fall in the UK HMRC RTI flash payrolls print that was released for May this morning. The print came in at -109k which if realised would be the third worst print since the series began back in mid-2014. Only the two "peak Covid" months of April 2020 and May 2020 saw larger falls.
- Looking at the hedgehog chart below, however, it shows that we do need to view a flash print with a bucketload of salt. There were large false negative prints seen, particularly in March 2024 (flash -67k) and April 2024 (flash -85k) that were revised much higher when the following month's data was released (and in fact the latest estimates for both of those months now are positive).
- However, what is also evident is that if we ignore the flash data and only look at the second estimates of the data, revisions are a lot smaller. And for third releases of the data there are even smaller revisions.
- So by the second (and definitely by the third) print of the data, we think there is a decent read. What is significant here is that if we exclude the nine months in the peak-pandemic period between March 2020 and November 2020), the April print would be the worst in the series (ignoring flash) and the March print would be the next worst print. So there is a clear trend emerging of a softening labour market here. Note that all of the previews that we read that mentioned the payrolls prints looked for upwards revisions here, not downwards.
- We do know that the MPC look at the PAYE RTI data. And we have also seen soft wage data (see our earlier coverage for more on that), vacancies have fallen more and the LFS unemployment rate has also ticked up.
- This is unquestionably a soft labour market print this morning and the trend in payrolls growth (even excluding the horrible flash number) will be a concern for MPC members.
