Foreign Exchange Insights and Next Week
Next Week
February 27, 2009
The coming week will see the release of manufacturing and non-manufacturing purchasing manager indices in a variety of countries, several interest rate meetings, Japan’s quarterly Finance Ministry corporate suvey and the monthly U.S. labor report. Aside from factory PMI’s on Monday and service PMI’s on Wednesday, scheduled euro area releases include producer prices in Germany, […] More
Foreign Exchange Insights and Next Week
Weekly Foreign Exchange Insights: February 27th
February 27, 2009
Risk averse markets continue to push equities lower and the dollar higher. Risk aversion is no longer supporting the yen, indicating that carry trades are at long last unwound. In January, the dollar had eased 0.8% against the Japanese currency but advanced at least 8.0% against the euro, Swiss franc, Ozzie dollar and New Zealand […] More
U.S. and Canadian Growth and PPI Inflation
February 27, 2009
U.S. fourth-quarter growth was revised to negative 6.2% at an annualized rate from minus 3.8% saar reported last month. This revision brings the United States into closer alignment with growth last quarter in major economies of Western Europe, where Euroland posted a drop of 5.7% and British GDP fell by 6.0%. Inventories accounted for almost […] More
New Overnight Developments Abroad - Daily Update
New Overnight Developments Abroad: Typical End-Month Barrage of Data
February 27, 2009
The dollar and yen recovered. The greenback is down 1.0% against the yen but shows gains of 1.2% against the Australian dollar, 1.0% against the kiwi, 0.9% versus sterling, 0.7% against the Swiss franc, 0.5% against the euro and 0.4% relative to the Canadian dollar. Stocks mixed. In Asia, the Nikkei rose 1.5%, and shares […] More
Currency Markets in the News
Today's U.S. Economic Data
February 26, 2009
New jobless claims are a gauge of the layoff rate and therefore a leading indicator of future consumer spending and GDP growth. What took almost five months for the layoff rate to climb about 100K from 440K on average in the four weeks to September 6th to 543K on average in the four weeks to […] More
Long-Term Dollar Trend
February 26, 2009
The Bretton Woods agreement of 1944 established dollar-gold convertibility and fixed dollar parities against other major currencies that were to be defended with intervention. A deteriorating U.S. balance of payments in the 1960’s caused by heavy domestic programs and escalation of the Vietnam War was draining U.S. gold holdings and putting the fixed exchange rate […] More
New Overnight Developments Abroad - Daily Update
New Overnight Developments Abroad: Softer Dollar and Yen
February 26, 2009
The dollar rose 0.3% against the yen but lost 0.7% against the Swiss franc, 0.5% against sterling, the euro and Australian dollar, 0.4% against the Canadian dollar and 0.3% against the kiwi. Dollar/yen of 98.0 was the strongest such has been since mid-November. Stock markets overnight have traded mixed. The Nikkei closed unchanged. Singapore’s market […] More
Bonds and Stocks
Will The Global Economy Emerge Stronger?
February 25, 2009
It’s been another tough session for U.S. stocks, and the DOW as on Monday is testing 7197, which prior to this week had been its lowest previous intra-day level of the current decade, touched in October 2002. Before then, the DJIA had not been below 7197 since May 16, 1997. Much is being made of […] More
Currency Markets in the News
British Fourth-Quarter Growth
February 25, 2009
Real GDP dropped 6.0% last quarter at an annualized rate (saar) and posted a 1.9% decline from 4Q07. On those two bases, 4Q08 had the worst results in 114 quarters and 70 quarters, respectively. By activity, the production, construction, and services sectors recorded declines of 16.8%, 4.3%, and 3.7% saar. Within the first of these […] More
Central Bank Watch
Polish Monetary Policy Eased Slightly
February 25, 2009
The Bank of Poland cut its key interest rates by 25 basis points. The main reference rate is now 4.0%, still almost a full percentage point above on-year CPI inflation of 3.1% as of January. In combination with rate reductions of 75 basis points each on January 27 and December 23 plus one of 25 […] More
