16 February 2012

Posted by Graham Parlane on 16 February 2012

 Yesterday/overnight

# The strong Australian employment report for January (unemployment down to 5.1% v 5.3% expected) saw NZD/AUD retreat sharply from 4 month highs of 0.7815 to 0.7730. The move pressured all NZD crosses other than against the JPY.

# U.S data releases all surprised to the upside (again). Weekly jobless claims fell (lowest level in 4 years), and housing starts for January rose 1.5%m/m (-3.4% expected). Later, Q4 mortgage delinquencies fell and the Philadelphia Fed survey of businesses rose to 10.2 (9.0 expected).

# All 10 sectors of the broad U.S. S&P Index rose

# Talk early this morning the ECB was poised to exchange Greek bonds for new securities further helped sentiment (i.e. national central banks within the Eurozone get to swap their distressed (junk!) Greek bonds for new ECB issued bonds.) I think this is pretty big news.

# USD/JPY hit 4 month highs near 79.00

Ahead

# RBNZ’s Bollard speaks

# Minutes from the Bank of Japan’s recent policy meeting

# U.K retail sales

# U.S. Jan CPI

Regards and good trading

G.

BBY (NZ) Limited,  a specialist advisor in Futures – FX – CFD – Options – Shares – Gold – Silver – Commodities

Tags: AUD, Bonds, ECB, Futures, Futures trading, FX, FX trading, Greece, Jobless Claims, JPY, NZD, NZDAUD, Other, S&P, US, USD, USDJPY