Nothing much has happened during the Asian session, besides a 10% loss in Nintendo (T:7974) shares after its stock price more than doubled with the prodigious launch of Pokémon GO last month and a 9% surge in McDonalds’ (NYSE:MCD) shares in Tokyo, following the announcement that McDonalds had become Pokémon GO’s first official sponsor.
Yesterday, British stocks closed at their highest level since August, leading to a bright green open in all FTSE sectors this morning, except for UK’s miners hit by soft oil and commodity prices.
Rio Tinto (LON:RIO) (-2.55%), Anglo American (LON:AAL) (-7.08%), Glencore (LON:GLEN) (-5.09%)
BHP Billiton (LON:BLT) (-3.50%) is subject to selling pressures although it announced plans to boost its iron ore output by up to 7%. Although, the company’s decision to cut its dividend and capital expenditures dented investors’ appetite earlier this year, 59% of brokers prefer to hold BHP shares in their portfolios; 24% are ready to buy with a 12-month target price of 960.26p and only 2% give a sell recommendation.
Sterling stalls despite good jobs data
The unemployment rate in the UK fell to 4.9% in May, yet the weekly earnings growth missed estimates. UK salaries grew at the slower pace of 2.2% year-on-year in May, versus 2.3% recorded a month before. The UK workers’ purchasing power could take a hit given a steeper inflation outlook following the Brexit decision and meagre business confidence. Hence, the strong employment data could hardly improve the mood in sterling’s buy camp. Trend and momentum indicators remain comfortably bearish, paving the way for a re-test of the 1.30 psychological support. Intra-day resistance is eyed at 1.3157, a 200-hour moving average. The GBP/USD dipped at 1.3065 in Asia. The dovish outlook regarding the Bank of England’s monetary policy is weighing on the sterling.
At her first cabinet meeting yesterday, the UK’s new PM Theresa May said she doesn’t want the UK to be ‘defined by Brexit’. This is certainly a major matter that she will need to fight against given that, as of today, the ‘Brexit' is the most popular common explicatory factor in the pricing of financial markets globally and core business decisions in the UK. As PM May prepares to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin today, Brexit will of course remain on the menu du jour.
Hedging against a stronger yen pre-BoJ
The Japanese yen remains offered on rising speculations that the Bank of Japan (BoJ) could lower its inflation forecasts and add further monetary stimulus at next week’s monetary policy meeting. Yet the enthusiasm among the BoJ-doves could lead to disappointment, as the BoJ may choose to hold fire, or to intervene via a softer-than-expected action, given that its manoeuvre margin has critically narrowed. Additionally, a gradually lower support from the market and the inefficient outcome in terms of growth and inflation has become an important headache for the BoJ Governor Kuroda. The BoJ is in a sensitive position today; it is nearly obliged to feed the market with additional stimulus to keep investors satisfied. Yet, the actual monetary tools are now insufficient to grant a continuation in the current unorthodox policy trend.
As of today, the BoJ is known to hold about one third of Japanese government bonds and is estimated to buy about 90% of new debt issues to keep up with its ultra-expansive monetary policy. It is also among the top ten shareholders in 90% of Nikkei 225 companies. Hence, we can argue that sooner rather than later, the BoJ will bump against physical constraints. Therefore, there is an increasing necessity to further shift toward alternative policy tools, such as ETF purchases and deeper negative rates, which are already on analysts’ watch lists. Yet, the market reaction to alternative tools has been quite discouraging so far. We remind that the latest BoJ rate cut has resulted in a near 25% appreciation in the yen against the US dollar. The IMF is also downplaying the need for a further depreciation in the yen, given that the costs of the monetary stimulus are becoming hard to justify.
While the sell-off in the yen is occurring at a reasonable pace, exporters are reported to be hedging against trend reversal risks; sell orders are presumed at the 106.50/107.00 area.
From a technical perspective, the USD/JPY will remain in the bullish trend above the 104 mark (major 38.2% retracement on July rise) and could extend gains toward 107.40, the 100-day moving average, as BoJ-doves are building fresh long positions before next week’s BoJ meeting. Still, any disappointment could rapidly drag the USD/JPY below the 104 mark and suggest a mid-term bearish reversal toward the 100 mark.
On a side note, the USD/JPY is sustained by the recovery in US sovereign yields. The US 10-year yield bottomed at 1.3180% on July 6th before recovering to 1.60% last week. But the positive momentum is losing pace as the market gives no more than a meagre 42.6% probability for the Federal Reserve (Fed) to raise the funds rate by the end of 2016.