NEWS / Foreign Exchange

Disappointing US Housing Figures Driving USD Lower

USD made new lows on very weak housing figures, however boosting a rally in fixed income. Stocks looking exhausted anticipating Durable Goods today and US GDP friday.

Overnight News Bullets

• Swiss Trade Balance (Mar) out at 0.72B vs. 1.11B expected.

• Swiss UBS Consumption Indicator (Mar) out at 2.131 vs. 2.031 previously.

• Euro-Zone New Industrial Orders MoM (Feb) out at -0.7% vs. 1.0% expected.

• Canadian Leading Indicators MoM (Mar) out at 0.4% vs. 0.5% expected.

• S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index YoY (Feb) out at -1.0% vs. -0.2% previously.

• Bank of Canada Rate Decision out at 4.25% (unchanged) as expected.

• US Consumer Confidence (Apr) out at 104 vs. 105 expected.

• US Richmond Fed Manuf. Index (Apr) out at -11 vs. -6 expected.

• US Existing Home Sales (Mar) out at 6.12M vs. 6.40M expected.

• US Existing Home Sales MoM (Mar) out at -8.4% vs. -4.3% expected.

• US ABC Consumer Confidence out at -7 vs. -5 expected.

• Japanese Merchandise Trade Balance Total (Mar) out at 1633B vs. 1380B expected.

• Japanese Adjusted Merchandise Trade Balance (Mar) out at 1123.1B vs. 950B expected.

Markets

• FX: USD TWI making new lows after the disappointing figures yesterday.

• Fixed Income: Bouncing higher across the board.

• Stocks: Ranging just below upper band of the bull channels in Europe and US. Nikkei down +1 percent.

• Commodities: Taking a beating, despite USD weakness. Crude Oil selling off, but remains above 63.

O/N Data Heat map:

Calendar

Today's Highlights:

This and Next Week??™s Highlights:

What's going on?

• USD making new lows on disappointing housing figures. Are we turning from bad to worse? Fixed Income rallying across the board, beginning to price in lower CPI readings.

• UK MPC Press Conference actually provided some support for the UK rate outlook.

• Stocks: at risk of a sell-off. The risk-reward favours the downside and fundamentals are deteriorating.

• GDP on Friday: We expect a positive surprise, but continuously deteriorating macro figures for the US economy for the rest of the year.

FX