Foreign Exchange Insights and Next Week
Next Week
March 12, 2010
Central banks will be in the main spotlight next week as policy meetings are scheduled in the United States, Japan, Turkey, Mexico, Chile, and Brazil. The BOJ will probably ease quantitatively, and Brazil’s key Selic rate is likely to get raised. In addition, Bank of England minutes should reveal another unanimous decision. The BOJ meeting [...] More
Pause in the Dollar
March 12, 2010
Upward pressure on the dollar has lost steam. As of 16:00 GMT today, the U.S. currency was showing losses for the week of 1.3% against the Canadian dollar and Swiss franc, 0.9% against the euro and Australian dollar, 0.6% relative to the kiwi but only 0.2% versus sterling. Previous dollar strength had been mostly at [...] More
Next Week
March 5, 2010
Highlights from the data calendar next week are Japanese GDP (first revision), industrial production in Britain and Euroland, U.S. retail sales, Canadian and Australian monthly labor market reports, and the whole spectrum of monthly Chinese statistics. Among scheduled monetary policy meetings in Switzerland, New Zealand, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Peru, and Russia, only Russia [...] More
All Major Currencies Carry Negative Baggage
March 5, 2010
Currency movements continue to be choppy and mixed from the standpoint of a dollar holder. So far this past week, the greenback recorded gains of more than 1.0% against sterling and the yen but also lost significant ground against the Canadian and Australian dollars. In between those extremes, identically small net gains were posted against [...] More
Next Week
February 26, 2010
Next week, the first in March, features the release of the monthly U.S. labor force survey, revised Euroland GDP, a quarterly corporate survey from Japan’s Finance Ministry, numerous purchasing manager survey reports (both manufacturing and services), and central bank policy meetings in Australia, Canada, Britain, Euroland, Indonesia, and Malaysia. The Fed Beige Book will [...] More
How Bullish Should One Be About the Dollar?
February 26, 2010
This past week saw the dollar perform better in the minds of analysts than in the marketplace. Gloom about Europe’s peripheral members — affectionately known as the PIIGS for Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain — generated further speculation that the euro might be headed for divorce or worse, a failed marriage. Even so the [...] More
Next Week
February 19, 2010
Chairman Bernanke with a fresh four-year term will be back at Congress doing his semiannual rundown on monetary policy. It’s funny how the timing of Fed moves make so much more sense after the fact. The Fed did a good job of preparing the public for a possible discount rate hike in the not-distant future, [...] More
The Dollar Express
February 19, 2010
The dollar is coming off yet another solid week. While attention continued to be riveted on the high debt and deficits of Euroland’s peripheral countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, the dollar scored its largest advances of the week against the yen, a new development, and sterling, which is an old story. The yen has [...] More
Next Week
February 12, 2010
Next week starts off with a bunch of holidays: Presidents Day in the U.S. on Monday, Family Day for Canada on Monday, Mardi Gras in Brazil on Monday-Tuesday, and the Lunar New Year in China all week. EU finance ministers, known as Ecofin, meet in Brussels on Tuesday to try and secure a plan for [...] More
The Mark, the Euro, the Dollar and the Yen: Now and Then
February 12, 2010
Risk aversion has the dollar grinding higher, but I’d like to focus this week’s Foreign Exchange Insights essay on the longer term prognosis. During the first 25 years of flexible exchange rates, the mark, yen and Swissy were called “hard currencies” because conservative monetary and fiscal policies in Germany, Japan and Switzerland promoted low inflation, strong [...] More
