Australia, NZ dollars badly bruised as greenback makes a comeback

SYDNEY: The Australian and New Zealand dollars were looking punch-drunk on Friday as six straight sessions of losses left them at multi-week lows on a resurgent greenback, though they held up better on other currencies.

The Aussie was pinned at $0.6429, and near a five-week low of $0.6422. That left it down almost 2% on the week, the steepest fall since late March. Support lies at $0.6373, with resistance at $0.6476.

The kiwi dollar was stuck at a 10-week trough of $0.5874 , having shed 2.3% for the week. Support lies at $0.5847, with resistance at $0.6932 and $0.5969.

The losses were almost all against the U.S. dollar, with the Aussie steady on the yen and up on the euro for the week.

That partly reflected markets scaling back the probability of a Federal Reserve rate cut in September to around 40%, from 75% a couple of weeks ago.

At the same time, a soft inflation report has markets ever more convinced the Reserve Bank of Australia will cut the 3.85% cash rate by 25 basis points when it meets on August 12, and continue easing to 3.10% by early next year.

“The risks appear to be skewed to the downside for inflation and this gives the RBA the green light to cut in August,” said Lucinda Jerogin, an economist at CBA, though she doubts it will move in September as well.

“There is a clear preference to wait for quarterly CPI prints, especially as we approach neutral,” she added. “We favour November as the next most likely outcome for a cut and it would take a considerable weakening in the economic data to consider the September meeting ‘live’.”

Investors are also wagering the Reserve Bank of New Zealand will cut its 3.25% cash rate by a quarter point at the next meeting on August 20, though that could be the end of the cycle.

It has already slashed rates by 225 basis points and it is very close to estimates of neutral, though some analysts argue policy should be flat-out stimulatory given the weakness of the economy.

Key will be quarterly data on the labour market due next week where analysts predict the unemployment rate will rise to its highest in eight years at 5.3%, while wage growth is expected to slow to the lowest in four years at 2.3%.