Rates as of 0500 GMT

Did you see the total eclipse of the moon this morning? Ive never seen one before so I got up at 430 AM, when it was supposed to be just starting, to check it out. Nothing. Went back out at 510 nothing. Went back at 530, when it was supposed to be at its peak, but the moon was no longer visible at all. Either it had set already or the sky was too bright. Oh well.

Market Recap

After several days of extremely volatile currency markets, Friday was relatively quiet. Perhaps it was the absence of much news during the day. The University of Michgan consumer sentiment index fell much more than expected see table above, but that didnt seem to impact the markets much the SP 500 finished up 2.4 anyway.

But the mood turned sour in Asia this morning as the Chinese data came out much worse than expected see table again. This has rekindled fears over global growth.

NZD was the worstperforming currency. NZ bond yields fell sharply Friday.

The market has started to question the aggressive rate hike profile thats been assumed for the RBNZ given growing questions about the global economic outlook and evidence of a sharp slowdown in the NZ housing market. The market still prices a high chance of a 50 bps hike at next weeks meeting and the July meeting, but the implied probability of 50 bps move at subsequent meetings has been pared back.

Its noticeable on the table at the bottom of this comment that gold was at the bottom while silver was at the top. I…