Daily Forex Market Preview, 15/02/2018
Consumer prices in the United States were seen rising stronger than expected in the month of January. Despite the upbeat figures, the U.S. dollar turned weaker on the day. Headline CPI rose 0.5% on the month beating estimates and rising to an annual pace of 2.1% while core CPI increased 0.3% on the month for an annual gain of 1.8%.
However, the upbeat data was offset by soft retail sales which fell 0.3% in January. The hourly earnings data also showed an increase of 0.8% in January up from December’s revised 0.6% increase.
Elsewhere, the Swedish central bank was seen holding its monetary policy unchanged at -0.50% at its meeting yesterday. The central bank signaled that it would hike interest rates in the second half of 2018 while downgrading its inflation forecasts.
Looking ahead the ECB’s Chief economists Peter Praet will be speaking at a panel discussion today. Data from the U.S. will see the producer prices numbers coming out for January. This will be followed by the regional manufacturing index data.
NZDUSD intra-day analysis
NZDUSD (0.7376): The New Zealand dollar posted a strong recovery yesterday as price managed to rise back to a one week high. However, further gains can be expected only a close above the previous highs near 0.7408. There is a possibility that this level could be tested but we expect that NZDUSD could reverse in the short term. Support at 0.7333 is likely to be tested to the downside. The fact that a retest of the lower support level at 0.7160 is still pending could remain as the downside risk.
