The headline US durable goods orders report was stronger than expected with a 1.8% increase for January, but the figure was inflated by aircraft orders and underlying sales declined 0.2% on the month following a revised 0.9% gain for January. Pending home sales data was weaker than expected with a 2.8% decline for January which pushed annual growth to 12- month lows. The Euro rallied to highs around 1.0630 after the US data as the dollar faded slightly.
Dallas Fed President Kaplan stated that the Fed should increase interest rates in the near future which helped boost speculation of a rate hike in March with futures markets indicating the chances of a move had increased to around 50%. The shift helped underpin the dollar and the Euro retreated below 1.0600 and held just below this level on Tuesday.
I’m a central banker, get me out of here Ant and Dec were not present at the RBA decision overnight. However, based upon the reception of the decision, Governor Michele Bullock might rightly feel she was in one of the duo’s trials. Markets offered a frosty reception to the Reserve Bank of Australia’s latest interest […]
UK With 2 year mortgage rates less than 4% and 5 years at 4.39%, the implication for the housing market which has responded by a modest 0.2% rise, is that rates are soon going to fall and that the UK economy is stabilising. While there will doubtless be setbacks to this rose tinted scenario, for […]
Data Day Despite salient data already having been published in China and France so far this morning, we are far from finished with the deluge of data due to reach the market today. The most important of which will be those that we have signposted in earlier briefings: Eurozone and US inflation figures. Given just […]