The Reserve Bank of New Zealand surprised analysts by cutting its Official Cash Rate by 0.25% to 5.25%.
- In the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s policy meeting earlier today, the Bank surprised the market by cutting its Official Cash Rate by 0.25% to 5.25%, sending the Kiwi lower. Governor Orr stated that a cut of 0.50% was considered, and that the Bank is confident that inflation is securely within its target band, so the normalisation of interest rates can begin.
- In the Forex market, the RBNZ rate cut send the Kiwi lower to become the weakest major currency since today’s Tokyo open, while the Euro is the strongest major currency. The EUR/USD currency pair is in focus today after it finally made a bullish breakout yesterday to test the big round number and area of long-term resistance at $1.1000. Trend traders will be interested in being long of this currency pair.
- Stock markets have continued to recover following the strong selloff over the early part of last week. However, the Asian session has seen most index futures trade sideways. The essential theme in the market today is basically weak risk-on sentiment, but markets will be closely watching today’s scheduled release of US CPI data and will likely take their next major direction from that.
- US CPI data is expected to remain steady at an annualized rate of 3.0%. A lower of higher reading will likely cause directional movement in the US Dollar and in US stock markets.
- The UK CPI data due today is expected to show a rise in the annualized rate from 2.0% to 2.3%.
- Gold came close to trading at a record high yesterday before selling off in recent hours. Monday’s New York close in Gold was a record close, which will have led many trend traders to enter a new long position here. If the support level at $2,457 holds and produced a bounce that could be a good long trade entry signal.
- US PPI data released yesterday came in lower than expected with a month on month increase of only 0.1%, suggesting declining inflationary pressure.
- UK Claimant Count Change (Unemployment Claims) data released yesterday was much higher than expected.
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