Dollar Lower After Weaker US Data

he markets have opened the week around the same levels that they closed in NY after a relatively quiet weekend.

We saw pressure on the dollar in the New York session on Friday after lower than expected CPI and Retail Sales data was released. The numbers weren’t dramatically lower, missing by 0.1-0.2% but it did take a bit of shine off the Usd strength with the Dxy trading down to 99.20 having been up above 99.60 for most of the day. Market pricing for a June rate hike has moved down to around 70% now.

It had been a pretty quiet Friday trading session up until then as traders had the change to gather their thoughts and currencies traded well within their recent ranges. Volatility indices are trading at very low levels at the moment especially in the Euro and in these circumstances it can just take one event (or tweet ?!?!) to kick things off in the currencies.

Today, we’ve already had retail sales data out of New Zealand which surprised to the top side lending a bit of strength to the flightless bird. (expect a large number for this in July/August as 20k+ British rugby fans are set to descend on the Land of the Long White Cloud and boost the economy significantly).

The focus for fundamental data today is on the Asian session with Chinese Industrial Production and Retail Sales data due at 12.00 pm and we hear from the RBNZ Assistant Governor at 3.00 pm. It’s pretty quiet for the rest of the day to be honest, but traders will be keeping a close eye on what the British PM’s comments are much later in the day at 5.00 am as she participates in a Facebook Live Q&A session.

So it looks set for more range bound activity today especially if the Chinese data comes out as expected, but as usual sharp traders will be keeping an eye out for anything to shake up the current status quo on the news wires.

Rakuten Securities Australia Review