Asia Pacific Market Open Talking Points
- NZD/USD[1] pauses downtrend on resistance after dismal US initial jobless claims
- Yen climbs before Golden Week holiday, 3M expected job cuts sink Dow Jones[2]
- S&P 500[3] futures hint downturn in market mood ahead as JPY[4] may extend gains
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FX News Thursday
The pro-risk New Zealand Dollar[6] outperformed against its major counterparts on Thursday, even by a greater extent than its similarly-behaving Australian Dollar[7] cousin. Most of its gains occurred in the lead-up to Wall Street market open where an hour before, mixed US economic data crossed the wires. Most notably, initial jobless claims unexpectedly rose 230k this past week versus 200k expected and 193k prior.
That was the largest increase (+19.2%) since September 2017 which ended 5 weeks of consecutive smaller filings for unemployment aid. This seemed to overshadow an uptick in durable goods orders which preliminary estimates point to a 2.7% gain in March from -1.1% in April (see calendar below). At the time of the announcement, the S&P 500, US Dollar[8] and local front-end government bond yields declined.
US Initial Jobless Claims and Durable Goods Orders
*All times listed in GMT
NZD/USD Technical Analysis
Taking a closer look at NZD/USD reveals that its best day in over a month (+0.49%) occurred right on support at 0.6592 on the chart below. This puts
