Entering into US session, New Zealand Dollar remains the strongest one for today, followed by Australian and then Canadian. On the other hand, Yen is so far the weakest, followed by Swiss Franc. Sentiments were lifted by optimistic comments from US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on trade. He reiterated that the negotiations are 90% complete and could be done by end of the year. Additionally, Bloomberg reported, quoting unnamed source, that US is preparing to delay imposition of new tariffs, in exchange for China’s agreement to return to negotiation take. And, some advisers went further to push Trump to refrain from setting a hard deadline, to avoid a situation similar to last December’s Trump-Xi summit.
RBNZ kept OCR unchanged and hinted on an August rate cut. The easing bias is actually well priced in and traders responded to the positive reference to the economy instead. That is, RBNZ noted that “GDP growth had held up more than projected” in Q1. And “some of the factors supporting growth in the quarter would continue.” BoE Governor Mark Carney noted again policy response to no-deal Brexit is not automatic. Nevertheless, it’s more likely for BoE to provide additional monetary accommodation in case of no-deal Brexit, then to tighten.
In Europe, currently:
- FTSE is up 0.13%.
- DAX is up 0.47%.
- CAC is up 0.16%.
- German 10-year yield is up 0.017 at -0.312.
Earlier in Asia:
- Nikkei dropped -0.51%.
- Hong Kong HSI rose 0.13%.
- China Shanghai SSE dropped -0.19%.
- Singapore Strait Times dropped -0.09%.
- Japan 10-year JGB yield rose 0.0062 at -0.145.
