Market Review – 04/05/2010 21:32GMT
Euro falls to a fresh one-year low against dollar on Greek debt contagion fear
The single currency remained under pressure throughout Tuesday on concerns about Greek debt problems and fears of possible contagion to other vulnerable eurozone countries. Although Greece would receive 110 billion euros in emergency loan from EU and IMF, investors still worried about the fiscal health of other euro zone countries (especially Spain and Portugal) together with Greece’s ability to enact promised spending cuts. The single currency tumbled to a fresh one-year low of 1.2980 on active cross selling in euro. Euro fell below key support at 0.8603 to 0.8567 and from 125.46 to 122.63 against the sterling and Japanese yen respectively.
Versus the Japanese yen, dollar initially rose above last month’s high of 94.78 to a near 9-month top at 94.99 in Asian morning as Monday’s 143-point rally in the Dow boosted investors’ risk appetite. However, the pair retreated from there and traded with a soft bias on renewed risk aversion due to the selloff in European and U.S. stocks on Tuesday and worries on Greece. Usd/jpy fell to 94.33 before staging a strong rebound in U.S. session while DJI ended the day down 225.06 points at 10926.77.
The British pound also fell in tandem with euro on renewed risk aversion together with worries that this week’s election would leave U.K. with a government too weak to rein in its record budget deficit. Cable moved narrowly in Asia but later tumbled to 1.5090 before rebounding in US session.
The Australian dollar fell broadly after the central bank increased the interest rate for the sixth time in seven meetings to 4.5% from 4.25% and stated that borrowing costs were around ‘average,’ suggesting the pace of rate hike might be slower in the future. Aud/usd tumbled fm 0.9272 to an intra-day low of 0.9083 in late NY trade.
On the economic front, orders for U.S. manufactured goods rose unexpectedly to 1.3% (versus forecast of 0.1% decline) after an upwardly revised 1.3% gain in February, initially reported as a 0.6% rise. Pending home sales index rose by 5.3%, more than expected, to a five-month high of 102.9 in March against the expectation of 4% increase. Eurozone producer price rose by 0.6% m/m and 0.9% y/y respectively versus the economists’ forecast of 0.7% m/m and 0.9% y/y. U.K. CIPS manufacturing PMI came in at 58.0 in April, higher than economists’ forecast of 57.4 and the upwardly revised reading of 57.3 in March.
Economic data to be released on Wednesday include: Germany Services PMI , EU Services PMI, U.K. PMI construction and U.S. ISM non-manufacturing.