Aussie Dollar May Keep Pressure Off Interest Rates
Your correspondent doesn't pretend to be the great know-all and predictor of everything. There’s two very good reasons for that - we don't know-all, and we can't predict everything with any great accuracy. What we think we do rather well is state the bleeding obvious.
One would have thought that there wasn't much traction in stating the obvious or using a bit of old fashioned common sense. Au contraire. Unfortunately, or fortunately for us, much of the action around financial markets involves bigger measures of hubris than it does of common sense.
Yesterday the All Ordinaries Index fell by over 1%. The reason? An increased expectation of a further interest rate rise. Er, surely that should have been priced into the market already. In fact we rather thought it had been. It appears that although it had been reflected in the foreign exchange rate of the Australian dollar, those in the equity markets hadn't realised this happening, so only reacted to it yesterday.
In yesterday's Daily Reckoning, Dan Denning pointed out that the Australian dollar may increasingly benefit from its strong performance against the US dollar as fund managers run for their lives from US fixed interest assets such as mortgage backed securities.
This could be just what the interest rate doctor ordered, and could very well save the Reserve Bank of Australia's bacon over its do-nothing inflation policy. Supposing fund managers do rush to enter the Australian market looking for a 'risk-free' interest rate of around 6.25%, the rush to buy Aussie dollars may help to keep some of the pressure off interest rates.
However, the inflation genie is notoriously stubborn when it comes to being shoved back in the bottle - especially when it has already been released and has gorged itself in the meantime.
Add on to this the reports that due to the drought, water irrigation allocations to farms in the Murray-Darling Basin area could be curtailed leading to a shortage of supply and therefore increased prices which would... push up inflation and... put a bit more pressure on interest rates.
Kris Sayce
The Daily Reckoning Australia
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About the Author
Kris Sayce began his financial career in the City of London as a broker specializing in small cap stocks listed on London's Alternative Investment Market (AIM). At one of Australia's leading wealth management firms, Kris was a fully accredited adviser in Shares, Options and Warrants, and Foreign Exchange. Kris was instrumental in helping to establish the Australian version of the Daily Reckoning e-newsletter in 2005. In late 2006, he joined the Melbourne team of the leading CFD provider in Australia.