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Mixed signals and choppy trading last night

Tue, Mar 10 2009, 07:06 GMT
by Westpac Institutional Bank Team

Westpac Institutional Bank  |  View company's profile

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Mixed signals and choppy trading last night. In the risk-positive camp were the S&P500 banks (+12%), the DAX and FTSE closing slightly firmer, oil rose 4% (partly attributed to a naval incident between the US and China), and US 10 year treasuries sold by 2bp. In the negative camp, the S&P500 open strongly, but faded throughout the session to be down 1% as we write, credit spreads widened, and copper is down 3%. Most notably, the US dollar was bought from Europe’s open, perhaps in response to the skittish trade elsewhere. The mixed tone was nicely demonstrated by the reaction to the Merck takeover of Schering-Plough – the M&A deal activity initially engendering optimism, but later taken as sign the recession is broadening its reach to the defensive pharmaceuticals sector.

NZD followed its ranging domestic session with a sell-off, from 0.5040 to 0.4925, and is poised to break lower again. Yesterday’s report showed Q4 real building work fell 6.5% overall.

AUD was neutral yesterday until Europe opened, when it was sold from 0.64 to around 0.6310. AUD/NZD’s break upwards from the mid-1.27’s to 1.2830 was technically convincing.

EUR was affected by the sell-bias early session, falling to 1.2555, but staged a recovery to 1.2665 late Europe. GBP was hardest hit, falling almost 4 cents to around 1.3745 and consolidating there, most likely reflecting the weekend’s news regarding Lloyds’ partial nationalisation (to around 77% government ownership). USD/JPY broke above the 98.30 area to 99.20, unsurprising after it posted its first current account deficit in 13 years.

Japan’s current account swung to –¥173bn in Jan from +¥125bn surplus in Dec, the first deficit in 13 years. Indeed, while partly reflecting seasonal factors, there was surplus of ¥258bn seasonally adjusted, this represented a record current account deficit for Japan. This included a trade deficit of ¥844bn, in line with the merchandise trade data, with exports –46.3%yr and imports –31.7%yr, on the global downturn.

European Sentix investor confidence fell to -42.7, undoing two months of improvement and sending the series below last December’s record low. The current business conditions indicator was particularly dire at -59.75.

Canadian housing starts fell to 134.6k, much weaker than the market expectation of 149k. Housing starts have collapsed 35% in the space of four months, to a level last seen in 2000.

Outlook

We said yesterday that a break of either 0.51 up or 0.4970 down was needed to establish short-term direction. The NZD broke down overnight, and 0.4970 should offer resistance today. It was telling that during an evening where asset class price action was mixed, risk-currencies were decisively sold. The sentiment pendulum appears to be swinging back towards our medium–term weak-NZD bias.

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Published on  Tue, Mar 10 2009, 07:09 GMT

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