HiFX morning Update, February 22 2019

The NZD opens down at 0.6802

All the headlines were out of Australia yesterday afternoon, with the Kiwi just being dragged along for the ride. First up their Employment data came in strong at a net 39k Jobs added. This saw the AUD pop half a percent, and things were looking good. The move was quickly reversed back to where we started on a report from Westpac Australia predicting two rate cuts by the end of the year. Following from this, news came out of China that one of their ports, the Dalian port, had banned coal imports from Australia. The ban is indefinite at this stage, with the worry being it is only going to escalate trade tensions even further.

A string of reasonably poor US manufacturing data last night helped stem some of the fall. Not Tier 1 data, but does not help the overall US growth picture.

Brexit talks continue out of Brussels, with conflicting headlines as to the success of them. The UK PM’s spokesman said they “Have been making progress.” The fact that they can’t even say they are making good progress probably tells more of the real story.

The RBA’s Lowe has a 3 hour speech from 11:30 this morning, with a lot of Fed speakers as well overnight. Any market moves out of that lot though would be relatively surprising.

Global equity markets are inching higher, - Dow -0.32%, S&P 500 -0.26%, FTSE -0.85%, DAX +0.19%, CAC +0.00%, Nikkei +0.15%, Shanghai -0.34%.

Gold prices are off, down -1.2% at $1,328 an ounce. WTI Crude Oil prices follow the trend, also down -0.8% trading at $56.85 a barrel.

ends

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