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Market Musing, Asia Pacific

AUD: Temporary GDP hammer blow?

The now dated Q3 Australian GDP has exerted downward pressure on the AUD (now ~$0.6415) with the already sluggish underlying growth picture undershooting analysts forecasts. This won’t surprise businesses at the coalface, particularly those in goods-producing and interest rate sensitive industries, with the GDP figures once again showing that higher mortgage rates and elevated prices are constraining private sector activity. The Australian economy expanded by 0.3% in Q3. As a result, annual growth decelerated to just 0.8%pa. Outside of the COVID lockdowns this is the slowest annual pace since the early-90’s recession. The detail in the national accounts can be...

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AUD/NZD: RBNZ stuck in reverse

In its final meeting of 2024 the RBNZ delivered another outsized rate cut with today’s 50bp reduction lowering the Official Cash Rate to 4.25%. Interest rates had peaked at 5.50% in NZ, but since turning course in August the RBNZ has delivered 125bps worth of easing in quick time as it looks to move settings out of the very ‘restrictive’ territory they were in. As a result, the RBNZ’s OCR is now below the RBA’s cash rate (now 4.35%) for the first time since mid-2013. And the gap should continue to widen, in our view, with the RBNZ set to...

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Trump 2.0 & the AUD

The decisive victory by former President Trump in the 2024 US election and elevated odds the Republicans also sweep Congress has generated bursts of market volatility over the past few sessions. This might be a taste of things to come. The election result shouldn’t be viewed as a ‘shock’ as it was 8 years ago. The outcome was in line with the signal various opinion polls and probability gauges had been pointing to for several weeks. Nevertheless, as we had forewarned in our prior research, a Trump win (particularly if it was compounded by Republican victories in both chambers of...

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US election: FX inflection point

The US Presidential Election is almost upon us with the vote held next week (5 November US time). While it has been tracked closely in the media for some time the same can’t be said for markets. Other macro and geopolitical developments such as the US/global interest rate cutting cycle, the situation in the Middle East, and macro goings on in China were front-of-mind for most of the past few months. But with the finish line nearing participants have finally been more seriously casting their eye over how the election could pan out and what it may mean for the...

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AUD/NZD: RBNZ delivers

The RBNZ has followed through and crystalized the built-up market expectations by delivering a 50bp interest rate cut at today’s monetary policy review. The move, the second interest rate reduction this cycle, lowers the RBNZ’s Official Cash Rate from 5.25% to 4.75%. The OCR had reached a peak of 5.5% during the RBNZ hiking phase which had put policy settings well into ‘restrictive’ territory. The economic winds of change are blowing hard in NZ. According to the RBNZ inflation is back in the 1-3%pa target band, activity is subdued with business investment and consumption weak, employment conditions have continued to...

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