By Joel Kruger, Technical Strategist for DailyFX.com
- Risk correlated asset well bid after IMF raises global growth forecasts
- Canadian Dollar outperforms following upbeat Bank of Canada
- Risks still associated with Spain; Thursday auction results in focus
- China still showing signs of slowdown; expected to weigh on markets
- Looking for US Dollar to find renewed bids over coming sessions
The rally in risk correlated assets on Tuesday was impressive and market participants took the opportunity to aggressively buy back into global equities, with the US stock market leading the charge. As was to be expected, commodity currencies performed well on the renewed optimism, with the Canadian Dollar standing out after receiving an added boost from a more upbeat Bank of Canada outlook on the local economy. Meanwhile, the Australian Dollar managed to shrug off an early dovish Minutes, with AUD/USD rallying back above 1.0400. Lack of any meaningful first tier economic data releases did not stop investors from being active, and a good deal of the risk-on price action was attributed to the news that the IMF has raised its 2012 global growth forecasts to 3.5% from 3.3% and upped its assessment for the G7 economies.
Still, we are uncomfortable buying into this risk rally and contend that markets are locked within a choppier consolidation that will ultimately lead to yet another bout of risk-off trade and intensified concern with the outlook for the global economy. While we did see some supportive comments on Spain on Tuesday, and even though auction results were better than expected, there is still a lot of risk associated with the Eurozone, and these risks pose potential threats to the broader macro environment. The Euro has reacted accordingly, and has been far more reluctant to join in the market rally over the past few sessions, which we believe is quite telling. The more significant 2014 and 2022 Spanish auction results are due tomorrow, the outcome of which will help to clearly define the underlying sentiment in the region.
Data out of China has also not been impressive, and the latest news that average home prices in 70 major cities have posted their first Y/Y decline since government property curbs were imposed 2 years ago, offers additional evidence of an economy which is showing cooling signs. As we have stated a number of times over the past several months, we believe that an accelerated China slowdown is still on the horizon which will manifest as the third phase of the global macro recession which began in 2008. This should put more pressure on global equities and correlated currencies like the commodity bloc and emerging market FX, while at the same time benefitting the US Dollar on flight to safety bids and the attractiveness to a US economy which was first into the crisis and likely to be the first to exit.




