Forex: Latest Market News

Australia's Victoria State Premier says it is too soon to open up from the COVID-19 lockdown and would need a low number of cases to ease restrictions, adds reopening plan to be announced tomorrow but it is not freedom day and will only be modest changes.

Australia's capital of Canberra will extend lockdown through September 17th.

The EU voted to approve fresh restrictions on US travellers coming into the bloc. US State Department raised the travel alert for Germany and Canada to level 3, while the US also issued COVID-19 "Do Not Travel" advisories for Switzerland and Estonia.

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ECB's Villeroy says that France and the EZ should be back to pre-COVID levels in early 2022 or maybe before this

• No risk of higher inflation at this stage
• PEPP will remain until at least March 2022; not urgent to decide on it at the September gathering
• Financing conditions have improved since June

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Oil producers have shut-in 95.65% of US Gulf of Mexico crude output totalling 1.74mln bpd and 93.75% of natgas production, while the Colonial Pipeline announced it will temporarily shut fuel lines from Houston, Texas to Greensboro, North Carolina and Marathon Petroleum's Garyville, Louisiana refinery (556k bpd) was also shut down over the weekend. US President Biden said Hurricane Ida is life threatening with the devastation likely to be immense and beyond the coasts, while he added they are planning for the worst from the hurricane and that it would take weeks for some places to restore power following the hurricane. Furthermore, President Biden later declared a major disaster for Louisiana and Entergy announced that all of New Orleans had lost power due to catastrophic transmission damage from Hurricane Ida.

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Fed Vice Chair Clarida (voter) stated there has been clear progress on the labour market which is in agreement with Fed Chair Powell and he would support a taper if the labour market gains continue as expected, while he added that we will get a better read on the labour market this fall. (Newswires)

Fed's Waller (voter) said we have definitely made progress on inflation and that one more good jobs report will be sufficient to be able to start tapering. Waller added that he would like to start to taper early this fall and does not see a reason to wait, while he definitely would like to see MBS taped faster and would like to finish taper by mid-2022 to have the space to raise rates if required. (Newswires)

Fed's Mester (2022, 2024 voter) reiterated the Fed has basically met the criteria for tapering asset purchases and believes the Fed should use the September meeting to lay out thinking about the pace and timing of tapering and looks to end taper by mid-2022. Mester also noted that whether they start tapering in November or December, it is not going to make a material difference for the economy and reiterated that even if there is some pullback, she thinks the economy will remain strong. (Newswires)

Fed's Bullard (2022 voter) said he favours tapering treasuries by USD 20bln a month and MBS by USD 10bln a month. (Newswires)

White House forecasts budget deficit to reduce by USD 684bln in the next decade, while there were separate comments from White House Economic Adviser Bernstein that they need to keep pushing a robust recovery in the US. (Newswires)

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