Forex headlines for Sept 29, 2013:
- New Zealand finance minister says RBNZ has acted independently in latest market operations
- Core PCE 1.5% vs 1.5% expected y/y
- August 2014 US personal income 0.3% vs 0.3% exp m/m
- Spain’s constitutional court suspends Catalonia independence vote
- US August pending home sales -1.0% vs -0.5% expected
- Fed’s Evans says substantial slack persists in labor markets
- Fed should wait to raise rates until confident – Evans
- September 2014 US Dallas Fed manufacturing index 10.8 vs 10.5 exp
- Canadian growth forecasts slashed by S&P
- Renzi says Italy will respect 3% deficit-to-GDP limit
- Treasury’s Raskin warns on student loans
- Fed’s Fisher says he’s happy with price stability
- Gold down $1 to $1217
- WTI crude up $1.04 5o $94.58
- S&P 500 down 4 points to 1978
- EUR leads, NZD lags
The FX market tried a few directions but aside from kiwi weakness and some spillover to AUD, the overall changes on the day were less than 20 pips. Tough for traders to get too aggressive ahead of quarter-end.
One of the takeaways was the ability of USD/JPY to gain some positive ground despite declines in stocks and Treasury yields. That shows the dip buyers firmly in control. The low in US trading was 109.13 but it bounced back easily.
Overall there was some decent volatility in US trading. EUR/USD chopped up and down to in a roughly 1.2675 to 1.2715 range twice. Cable ramped up to 1.6275 before sagging back down to 1.6244.
There were rumors of Morgan Stanley dumping stock futures at the open and that created a bit of US dollar selling but it quickly ebbed and stocks finished down only modestly.
NZD/USD has held the Asia lows and they haven’t been tested. From a quick spike down to 0.7709 there has been a steady rebound that stalled just ahead of 0.7800 but after the London fix there has been renewed selling, albeit slowly, down to 0.7766.
