At around 0.8190, the NZD/USD is not far from where it sat this time yesterday. But that masks a full 1 cent range over the past 24 hours. The kiwi caught a bid yesterday jumping on the coat tails of a stronger AUD following a speech by RBA Deputy Governor Lowe. The speech was actually on productivity and infrastructure. But with his response to questions suggesting that the threshold for FX intervention remains fairly high while not ruling it in or out was enough for the market to push the AUD/USD from around 0.9160 pre-speech to above 0.9200. This put some air under the kiwi’s wings yesterday. Further oomph was given to the NZD following a Wall Street Journal article noting the upward pressure on the RBNZ to lift interest rates. All this was enough to push the NZD/USD over 0.8260 late yesterday. Overnight was a different story, with the commodity currencies falling against the USD (see Majors). The AUD fell back below 0.9100. There was no one particular catalyst with a performance mish-mash across equities and commodities amid hints of ‘risk-off’ tendencies sneaking into markets
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