Forex News for 9 March, 2023
Amsterdam
March 9, 2023
- The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) is expected to raise its interest rate by 25 basis points to a decade-high of 3.6% on March 7th, with the possibility of further rate hikes in the coming months if the same sentiment from February is present in the March statement.
- Markets are looking for signs of hawkishness in Powell’s semi-annual monetary policy report on March 7th, but he is unlikely to commit to a definite policy path ahead of U.S. labor and inflation data releases.
- The Bank of Canada (BOC) is expected to hold its interest rates steady at 4.5% on March 8th, following a record pace of 425 basis point increases in the last 10 months.
- The Bank of Japan (BOJ) is expected to maintain its ultra-loose policies, including interest rates and yield curve controls, in its policy update on March 10th.
- Non-farm payrolls in the U.S. are expected to come in above the 200K mark on March 10th, while the unemployment rate and average hourly earnings maintain their rates of 3.4% and 0.3%, respectively.
- Analysts predict more upside for the U.S. labor data this week due to a persistently low initial jobless claims trend and upside surprises in the business employment indices.
- The ADP report is expected to show a gain of 195K, while JOLTS job openings are expected to slow down from 11.01M to 10.61M on March 10th, which could narrow down NFP speculations.
- Another strong NFP report could give the Fed more room to raise its interest rates even higher or keep them at high levels for longer than expected.
- The AUD/USD pair is having trouble making new lows below the .6700 psychological handle, and the 100 SMA looks ready to cross above the 200 SMA on the daily time frame.
- Depending on market expectations and risk-taking behavior, the AUD/USD pair could bounce from its current levels and retest previous areas of interest, or breach its .6700 support and drop to previous support levels of .6600 or .6550.
