The risk picture is slowly improving after an earlier hiccup on the debt ceiling.The market took the poor Empire Fed in stride and that was a impressi
The risk picture is slowly improving after an earlier hiccup on the debt ceiling.
The market took the poor Empire Fed in stride and that was a impressive. Bitcoin has also been consistently strong today and perhaps that was a hint at what was coming.
AUD/USD has now retraced Friday’s declines and is right back in the range. There is ongoing worry about China and that’s a big factor for the Australian dollar later, with data on industrial production, employment and retail sales coming up later.
FreightWaves has an interesting article up today arguing that the anticipated boost to global ocean container demand following the end of Chinese COVID-19 restrictions has failed to materialize. Their data shows the actual volume of ocean containers departing from Chinese ports to U.S. ports has remained low.
They note that as 2023 progressed, global container volumes began to plummet, with no significant signs of a surge in volumes from China.
Despite hopes of a “soft landing” for the global ocean container market, volumes have continued to soften. It looks like the much-touted China reopening isn’t going to be the white knight for the global trade recession after all.
The PBOC also didn’t deliver any help today with the 1-year MLF rate left unchanged at 2.75%.
In terms of technicals, it’s been two days of heavy selling before today but AUD/USD found support ahead of the March/April lows so there’s the potential for a base here but it’s too early to have any confidence in that. We’ll have to wait for the China numbers.
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