SYDNEY/WELLINGTON: The Australian and New Zealand dollars found support on Thursday as the global appetite for risk assets recovered from the shock of Brexit, though speculation about future cuts in domestic interest rates limited their gains.
The Australian dollar was parked at $0.7448, having risen almost half a U.S. cent in the previous 24 hours, but faced stiff chart resistance in the $0.7450/7470 zone.
It has now recovered around half the loss suffered when Britain voted to leave the European Union, which toppled it from $0.7650 to $0.7305 in just a day.
The currency was still 3 percent higher for June as a whole, thanks in large part to the fading risk of a rise in U.S. interest rates which hobbled the U.S. dollar.
While the Federal Reserve had been talking of a move as early as July, recent events have led the market to price out all chance of hike this year and perhaps not until 2018.
Yet speculation is also rampant that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) will have to trim its 1.75 percent cash rate, if only to stop the local currency from rising any further.
The central bank is thought unlikely to cut as soon as its July policy meeting next week but might re-instate an explicit easing bias prior to a move in August.
That outlook was keeping government bonds well supported with 10-year yields not far from record lows at 2.02 percent. That was down 30 basis points for June so far, and a thumping 87 basis points since the start of the year.
Bond futures were off just a shade on Thursday, with the three-year bond contract down 2 ticks at 98.490. The 10-year contract eased a single tick to 97.990.
The New Zealand dollar was holding at $0.7101, having bounced from as low as $0.7042 on Wednesday. It was up almost 5 percent for the month so far, aided in part by a run of upbeat domestic economic data.
A survey out on Thursday showed that New Zealand business confidence jumped to its highest in six months in June, though the improvement mainly preceded the Brexit vote.
Still, uncertainty over the EU and the global economy had not gone away and could eventually drag on the Kiwi.
"We maintain our view that the NZD has more downside than upside risk into the second half of the year," said BNZ currency strategist Jason Wong in a research note.
"We'd be surprised if the recovery in risk appetite extended that much further."
New Zealand government bonds eased, sending yields 1.5 basis points higher at the short end of the curve.
Bond prices remain sharply higher for the month with yields on 10-year paper just above all-time lows at 2.38 percent. That was down from 2.63 percent at the end of May and 3.60 percent at the start of the year.
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