Forex news for New York trading on March 20, 2017

  • Fed's Evans: Supports two or three hikes in 2017
  • Did the Fed's Evans just rule out a May hike?
  • Fed's Evans: Economy is on a good course right now
  • Dijsselbloem: "Let's be realistic, my turn as fin min will certainly come to an end"
  • Bundesbank's Weidmann repeats current ECB policy is still appropriate
  • Macron takes his first 1st round lead over Le Pen in Elabe poll
  • Comey and Rogers say they maintain Russia meddled in election to help Trump, hurt Clinton
  • OPEC support increases for extending cut into H2, but want non-OPEC involvement
  • Harker: I forecast 3 hikes at the start of the year and now was right time for first one
  • Kashkari: I'm not opposed to moving rates when the data improves, but it's moving sideways
  • Fed's Kashkari: I'd like the balance sheet to be the next move
  • Fed's Evans: Economy is on a good course right now
  • February 2017 Us Chicago Fed national activity index 0.34 vs -0.05 prior
  • Canada January wholesale trade sales +3.3% vs +0.5% m/m expected
  • BOE's Haldane: Less reliance on monetary policy 'desirable'

Markets:

  • S&P 500 down 5 points to 2373
  • Gold up $5 to $1234
  • US 10-year yields down 4 bps to 2.46%
  • WTI crude down 61-cents to $48.17
  • NZD leads, GBP lags

Cable is finishing down 40 pips and NZD/USD is up 40 pips. Pretty much everything else is flat on the day.

It wasn't the most volatile trading day but we learned a few things. Evans stands out for me because he wasn't dovish at all. Sure, he said 2-3 hikes rather than the 3-4 hikes that the market's thinking about. But he said risks were too the upside and that they're compounded by potentially stimuluative fiscal policy.

The dollar didn't notice and that's fair, the market has had enough of the Fed for a few days and Kashkari was out at the same time making some good arguments for why rates shouldn't go up at all.

The Australian dollar touched a four-month high in one of the few real market headlines on the day. It made a quick run up at the start of New York trading at hit 0.7748 before fading back to 0.7729 late, to finish up a quarter-cent on the day.

Cable continues to baffle me. Everyone knows Article 50 is coming and yet specs are piling into shorts and evidently decided to sell a bunch more today on reports that March 29 will be the day. It had been higher at 1.2430 but slowly slid to 1.2377 in New York trade.

EUR/USD was also in a slow drift lower to 1.0730 from 1.0760. It hit some stops below 1.0730 in US trade but there was no follow through.

USD/CAD couldn't even get excited by the 40-cent roundtrip in oil on some OPEC headlines. It raded in a 1.3340 to 1.3370 range, hitting each side too many times to count.

Japan is back from holiday so hopefully that livens things up.