April 12, 2019 - Page 2 of 2 - Financial Occultist

This quick note on sterling via ING pretty much sums it up …

GBP: Neither here nor there

The 6 month extension of Article 50 modestly weighed on GBP given that

(a) the cliff edge of hard Brexit is still in sight and not being postponed long enough;
(b) the not long enough extension is unlikely to allow the BoE to hike interest rates, meaning that GBP will miss on one potential positive catalyst.

In the meantime, the extension is unlikely to improve business confidence much, thus limiting the upside to GBP. With the bar for the Brexit deal being passed through the UK Parliament by the October deadline still rather high and the rising probability of a change in Conservative leadership ahead of the October deadline (ie Conservative Party Conference in Sep), this suggests a difficulty for EUR/GBP to move below the 0.8500 level

China trade balance data for March is due today – what to expect

12-Apr-19 05:28 am

Anirudh Sethi

The timing of the data can varied, but around 0300GMT has been good for recent releases.

First to hit will be ‘yuan terms’, followed by USD terms 9again, based on recent experience.

In February exports plummeted, which made sense given the trade tensions with the US. But is this just a back fitted narrative? The question is how much the Feb data was hit by the lunar new year holidays. Hopefully March is clearer, but Goldman Sachs warn the distortions from the holiday can persist into the first half of March.

Yuan terms

China trade balance for March: expected CNY 178.2bn, prior was CNY 34.6bn