GrowthAces

GrowthAces

USD/JPY: BOJ raised its growth forecasts, as expected Macroeconomic overview As widely expected, the BOJ maintained a pledge to guide short-term interest rates at minus 0.1% and the 10-year government bond yield to around zero. In a quarterly review of its forecasts, the BOJ raised its growth estimates for the fiscal year beginning in April to 1.5% from 1.3%...

GrowthAces

EUR/USD: Eurozone inflation back in ECB target Macroeconomic overview Inflation in the Eurozone accelerated to 1.8% yoy, up from 1.1% in December, putting it within range of the European Central Bank's medium-term target of below but close to 2%. It was the highest rate since February 2013. Core inflation, which excludes volatile prices of energy and unprocessed...

GrowthAces

Macroeconomic overview The Bank of England will simultaneously publish the February Inflation Report, the MPC policy decision and the MPC minutes on Thursday. We expect the Committee to vote unanimously to keep the stance of monetary policy unchanged. The BoE is widely expected to revise up its short-term growth and inflation forecasts following reassuring recent...

GrowthAces

USD/CAD: Eyes on Poloz first, then focus will turn to Fed Macroeconomic overview Speculators turned bullish on the CAD last week for the first time since September, data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Reuters calculations showed. Canadian dollar positions swung to net long 2,519 contracts as of January 24 from net short 5,456 contracts a week...

GrowthAces

Macroeconomic overview The Australian dollar held near two-month highs on Wednesday as traders unwound their long positions in the greenback after U.S. president-elect Donald Trump expressed concerns at the currency's strength. Wednesday's survey of the Melbourne Institute and Westpac Bank found consumer sentiment in Australia edged up just 0.1% in January,...

GrowthAces

Macroeconomic overview Grumbles from Donald Trump about the strength of the dollar pushed the currency down for the seventh day in the past ten on Tuesday. The shift has been most pronounced against the yen. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal he said: "I would talk to China first," but "our companies can't compete with them now because our currency is...

GrowthAces

Macroeconomic overview We do not expect new policy announcements when the ECB meets this week (Thursday). Therefore, the monetary policy framework will remain the same as announced on 8 December: EUR 80 billion of monthly asset purchases until March, with a slowdown to EUR 60bn per month in the remaining nine months of the year. We think that ECB President...

GrowthAces

Canadian job growth surged in December as full-time employment finally rebounded, turning concern about a weak labor market on its head and raising hopes the economy may have turned the corner after two years of pain caused by low oil prices. Employers added 53.7k jobs in December and 214k in 2016 as a whole, the best annual growth since 2012, bucking market...

GrowthAces

Nonfarm payrolls rose by 156k jobs last month, the Labor Department said on Friday. The reading was below the market consensus of 178k, but employers hired 19k more workers than previously reported in October and November. Fed Chair Janet Yellen has said the economy needs to create just under 100k jobs a month to keep up with growth in the work-age...

GrowthAces

Minutes from the central bank's December meeting showed that almost all Federal Reserve policymakers thought the economy could grow more quickly because of fiscal stimulus under the Trump administration and many were eyeing faster interest rate increases. Policymakers were clear that the outlook for fiscal easing remained uncertain, but it could, if implemented,...

GrowthAces

The CAD made a slight gain against a much stronger USD on Tuesday, holding in despite a sharp reversal in prices for crude oil, a major Canadian export. Oil reached 18-month highs in morning trade yesterday before retreating as the greenback hit its highest level against a basket of currencies since late 2002 on the back of data showing solid growth in U.S....

GrowthAces

The U.S. Institute for Supply Management said its index of national factory activity rose 1.5 points to 54.7 last month, the highest level since December 2014. A gauge of new orders jumped 7.2 points to its highest level since November 2014. Twelve industries, including petroleum, electrical equipment, appliances and components and machinery, reported growth in...

GrowthAces

British manufacturing growth climbed to a two-and-a-half-year high last month, fuelled by new orders from both home and abroad and adding to signs the economy ended 2016 strongly. British manufacturing PMI rose to 56.1, the strongest reading since June 2014, from 53.6 in November. That exceeded market forecasts, which pointed to a decline to 53.1. The boost to...

GrowthAces

The EUR/USD climbed to a1.0651 on Friday, but retreated immediately near 1.0500 . We used this jump to get short at 1.0590, in line with our trading idea. The shift came in the period at the start of the Asian day when markets were at their thinnest and the bulk of liquidity available tends to come from the automated computer programmes run by banks and other...

GrowthAces

Core consumer price index, which includes oil products but excludes volatile fresh food prices, slipped 0.4% in November from a year earlier, compared with a median market forecast for a 0.3% fall. An indicator released by the Bank of Japan showed that Japanese consumer prices rose 0.2% in November from a year earlier when stripping away the effect of...

GrowthAces

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand said that its main interest rate is likely to remain at its current level for some time, though there were signs that super-easy policies globally were finally turning the corner. RBNZ governor Graeme Wheeler said in a speech published on the bank's website that its official cash rate projections were still "highly conditional" on...

GrowthAces

The Bank of Canada kept interest rates unchanged yesterday, as widely expected. Dropping its usual language about the balance of risks, the Bank of Canada said the current state of monetary policy "remains appropriate.” The bank moved away from a more pessimistic tone it set in October, when Governor Stephen Poloz said policymakers had actively considered cutting...

GrowthAces

We expect the ECB to announce a six-month extension of its quantitative easing programme beyond March 2017 at the present pace of EUR 80 billion per month (interest rate announcement: 12:45 GMT; press conference: 13:30 GMT). The decision to keep buying assets at an unchanged pace would largely be intended to preserve the current “very substantial degree” of...