NZD/USD: Mildly bid around 0.6620 amid lack of major catalysts
- Trade tensions remain in the spotlight amid lack of major data.
- USD recovery couldn’t derail Antipodeans’ strength.
With little news to follow concerning the Kiwi pair, NZD/USD remains modestly positive near 0.6620 at the start of Thursday’s Asian session.
Despite trimming most of its earlier gains due to the upbeat ISM non-manufacturing services PMI from the US, the Kiwi extended its north-run for a fourth consecutive day on Wednesday.
Reasons can be the market consensus of a rate cut from the US Federal Reserve and rush to the safe havens amid the Trump administration-led trade tussles.
Global risk sentiment continues to be fragile even if the latest improvement in the US PMI stopped further declines. The US 10-year treasury yield seesawed around 2.13% by the press time.
Looking forward, New Zealand’s ANZ commodity prices and the US trade balance are the only important data on the economic calendar. Herein, the Kiwi data is expected to print a 0.0% mark versus 2.5% prior while the US trade deficit could widen to $-50.7 billion from $-50.0 billion previous.
At the political front, the US-China relationship is growing sour and CNN recently reported that the US intelligence knew that China was behind Saudi Arabia’s missile attack. However, no response from the US President Trump has been seen off-late and might trigger volatility when witnessed.
Additionally, the US-Mexico talks to avoid tariffs are awaited to announce the results and may also fuel market momentum.
Technical Analysis
50-day simple moving average (SMA) level of 0.6640 is yet to be closed, which in turn could escalate the pair’s rally towards late-April month tops near 0.6685 and then to 200-day SMA level of 0.6710.
Meanwhile, 0.6600 and last week's high near 0.6560 can offer immediate supports to prices during pullback ahead of highlighting 0.6500 and May month low around 0.6480.