NZD slides as business confidence falls

The New Zealand dollar extended losses on Tuesday amid a massive in business confidence. During the Asian session, the Kiwi fell 0.60% against the greenback as it reached $0.7215. Business confidence tumbled to zero, the lowest level since September 2015, compared to 18.3 in August. The drop came amid a significant deterioration of expected business conditions, especially in the manufacturing industry. In addition, the uncertainty stemming from Saturday’s election as there was no clear winner. The ruling National Party got only 46% of the vote, while the opposition (composed of the Labour party and the Green) acquired roughly 42% of the vote. The Kiwi is ahead of a difficult periods as the uncertainty will last several weeks. Indeed, both sides will try to get the support of the NZ First Party to build a coalition government.

Investors, and especially leveraged speculators, already started to reduce their long speculative positions. Net long non-commercial futures positions accounted for roughly 63% of total open interest in early August. As of last week, this number decrease to 18%, suggesting that the Kiwi is running out of steam.

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From a technical standpoint, a key support can be found at $0.7146 (200-dma), while on the upside the 0.73 area will act as main short-term resistance (50-dma and 38.2% Fibonacci level on July - August retracement). On the medium-term, NZD/USD continues to trade within its downtrend channel. A return towards $0.70 cannot be ruled, especially now that the Federal Reserve in the US is set to tighten monetary policy further in December, while having already announced the beginning of its balance unwinding for October.