The
Reserve Bank of New Zealand raised its cash rate target by 50bp
today, to 5.25%. A +25bp was the consensus expected, and very widely at that. The RBNZ blew that out of the water. Governor Orr is hell-bent on driving inflation down in the country. There is more detail
in the bullets above.
NZD/USD
was marked higher on the announcement and has currently not yet
filled in that gap.
There
was little other data nor news to drive forex markets far from where
the US time zone left them. Hong Kong and China were out on holiday
for the day, which sapped a good deal of interest from the
session.
Reserve
Bank of Australia Governor Lowe gave a speech, the topic was
“Monetary Policy, Demand and Supply”. Lowe didn’t add very much
at all to what was said yesterday, although a clear subtext to his
words seems to be that the Bank is watching the impact of higher
rates on overseas economies to help sap demand from the Australian
economy (perhaps via reduced demand for Australian exports? Good luck
with that as China ramps up).
While on central banks, Loretta Mester, president and CEO of Federal Reserve Bank Cleveland branch spoke, saying she sees Fed rates higher for longer
Asian
equity markets: