Dollar and Yen Soared as Worry on Sovereign Risk Intensified

Markets were pretty steady last week until concern of Greece deficit contagion across Europe intensified on Thursday and rocked financial markets around the world. Credit-default swaps on the debt of Greece, Spain and Portugal rose to record highs today amid concern that European governments will struggle to fund their deficits. There were even talks in the market that Greece’s problem is a ‘dressed rehearsal’ for US and UK, which also have huge budget deficits. MSCI World index dropped 2.2% to 1095.4 while DOW breached 10,000 level twice before closing at 10,012.23. Dollar managed to ride on risk aversion with dollar index closed above 80 level and the Japanese was also broadly higher across the board. Nevertheless, DOW’s refusal to give away 10,000 level and late Friday’s pullback in risk aversion argues that flight-to-safety fund flow has possibly peaked in near term and we might see the markets stabilize a bit in near term.

One point to note is that data released from CFTC on Friday showed that speculative accounts built a record net euro short position and flipped their net yen short position to a net yen long as per February 2. Speculators increased their euro short position to -43,741 contracts from last week’s short of -39,539, which was in sharp contrast to record net euro long of +119,538 contracts seen May 15, 2007. Speculative accounts had a net yen long of +7,135 contracts, comparing to to the net yen short of -4,347 contracts seen last week and the December 1 position of +56,907 contracts, which was the largest net yen long of 2009.

Employment data released last week reminded the markets that global recovery is still fragile. US job market contracted -20k in January versus expectation of 20k expansion. December’s figure was also revised down from -85k to -150k. Unemployment rate dropped from 10.0% to 9.7%, which was the best number in five months. However, that was largely due to a sharp increase in the number of people giving up looking for work as number of ‘discouraged job seekers’ rose to 1.1 million in January from 734,000 a year ago. New Zealand unemployment rate surged sharply from 6.5% to 7.3% in Q4. Nevertheless, Canadian employment data showed much better than expected expansion of 43k in January, the fourth gain in six months. Unemployment rate also dropped to 8.3%.

ECB kept its main refinancing rate unchanged at 1%. The introductory statement was very similar to the one released 3 weeks ago. The central bank believed current rates remain appropriate and risks to economic outlook are broadly balanced. Concerning gradual phase-out of extraordinary stimulus measures, the ECB said more details will be given in March. Concerning Greece’s 3-year plan to reduce budget deficit, the President said it ‘steps in the right direction’ but ‘they must fix the goals that they have set for themselves’.

BoE left rates unchanged at 0.50% and paused its GBP 200b asset purchase program as widely expected. The bank said in the accompanying statement that the current interest rate “would continue to impart a substantial monetary stimulus to the economy for some time to come.” Meanwhile, the committee will “continue to monitor the appropriate scale of the asset purchase program and further purchases would be made should the outlook warrant them.”

As a surprise to the market, the RBA announced to keep the overnight cash rate unchanged at 3.75%, following 3 consecutive hikes last year, as policymakers would like to gauge the impact of previous hikes and stimulus withdrawal. RBA noted that lenders in Australia has “generally raised rates a little more than the cash rate over recent months” and “loan rates have risen by close to a percentage point.” The bank would seek to hold the cash rate steady for the moment to see the impact of these changes to the economy. Nevertheless, the bank maintained a tightening bias that “if economic conditions evolve broadly as expected, the Board considers it likely that monetary policy will, over time, need to be adjusted further in order to ensure that inflation remains consistent with the target over the medium term.”

Looking at the charts, DOW’s recover was limited by 55 days’ EMA and fall from 10729.89 resumed. 10,000 psychological level is so far still stubbornly held but we’ll expect it to be taken out decisively eventually. Whole medium term rebound from 6469.9 has completed at 10792.8 and we expect a correction to 38.2% retracement at 9102 at least.