Foreign Exchange Insights and Next Week
Next Week
January 30, 2009
The first week of February is very light on Japanese data — just the monetary base and index of leading economic indicators — but will comprise at least seven central bank meetings involving Euroland, the U.K., Australia, South Africa, Indonesia, the Czech Republic, Norway and Peru. Only the ECB is not expected to cut interest […] More
Foreign Exchange Insights and Next Week
Weekly Foreign Exchange Insights: January 30th
January 30, 2009
Movement in the dollar has an Alice-in-Wonderland feeling. Bad economic news ratchets up risk aversion, lifting the dollar counter-intuitively. It is hard to ignore instinct, as anyone who tries to steer into a skid quickly learns. Here’s another peculiarity: although risk aversion favors the yen, the dollar at 16:10 GMT today showed identical gains for […] More
U.S. and Canadian Growth
January 30, 2009
An unexpected rise in inventories led to a much smaller-than-expected 3.8% annualized decline of U.S. GDP last quarter. The quarter, along with 3Q74 when GDP also fell 3.8% saar, ranks only as the tenth worst one since mid-1947. The rise of inventories was unplanned and points to weaker growth in the first half of this […] More
Currency Markets in the News
Five Worst U.S. Quarters Since Mid-1947
January 30, 2009
In only five quarters since the middle of 1947 did real U.S. GDP decline by 5.0% or more at an annualized rate. Those quarters were 4Q60 (-5.1% saar), 1Q49 (minus 5.9%), 1Q82 (-6.4%), 2Q80 (-7.8%) and 1Q58 (-10.4%). Last quarter is likely to become the sixth instance of negative growth with a five- or worse […] More
New Overnight Developments Abroad - Daily Update
New Overnight Developments Abroad: Mixed Dollar Ahead of 4Q U.S. GDP Figures
January 30, 2009
In another sign of risk aversion, the yen (+0.6% against the dollar) is today’s strongest currency. The weakest ones are the Ozzie dollar (-1.8%) and the Russian rouble, which slid past 40 against its target basket. The dollar fell 0.2% against sterling but shows gains of 0.5% against the euro and kiwi and 0.3% relative […] More
