Improved risk sentiment should help the NZD, but the RBNZ meeting could be a spoiler – Westpac

FXStreet (Delhi) – Imre Speizer, Senior Market Strategist at Westpac, suggests that markets should start this week on an optimistic note, given the bounce in risk sentiment late last week.

Key Quotes

That bounce was partly caused by the ECB saying they are ready to expand their money printing program.

NZD/USD Outlook:

1 week: The improved risk sentiment should help the NZD initially, but the RBNZ meeting on Thu could be a spoiler. We target an initial bounce to 0.6600. The RBNZ’s OCR Review is likely to sound more dovish than they did in December, thanks to persistently sticky and low inflation, and may even shift an explicit and unconditional easing bias (currently it has a weak and conditional easing bias).

3 months: We expect NZD/USD to remain under downward pressure during the next few months, targeting 0.62. Our main argument is that the Fed should raise US interest rates further this year but markets have priced little in. The US labour market is looking strong and that should eventually result in wage inflation, in turn causing the Fed to tighten further. In contrast, the RBNZ should strengthen its easing bias, and markets will increasingly price in further rate cuts in 2016. In addition, low oil prices will act as a headwind for NZ dairy product prices, and thus the NZD.

1 year: Our 1 year ahead forecast is 0.62, based partly on the OCR being cut by another 50bp to 2.0%, but the Fed rate to rise by 100bp to 1.375%.”