APAC Morning Update - 19/02/21

The NZDUSD opens at 0.7213 and the AUDUSD opens at 0.7762

There are some interesting moves going on, with the Pound being the clear winner at the moment. As vaccines are rolled out, countries that are most affected by Covid, will disproportionately benefit relative to countries that aren’t as badly affected. You are seeing this already in the UK, as they roll out the vaccine the quickest of all the majors countries. 25% percent of the UK have had at least one dose. America is actually doing surprisingly well, with 17% having at least one dose.

Now the conventional wisdom was your first dose is only about 50% effective, and your second takes you up to 95%. This has now been rethought, with a new study saying that 50% figure was actually calculated a bit early, and if you wait a bit more time before measuring, efficacy actually increases to 93% on the first dose. Therefore as speed of the rollout is everything, instead of wasting the second dose increasing efficacy from 93% to 95%, it would be a lot smarter to give everyone at least one dose. Also if you delve more into the data, the UK have 24% at 1 dose, but only 1% at 2 doses. Previously this was considered as being only 1% fully vaccinated. Now you could probably safely argue it is a lot closer to 25% ‘basically’ fully vaccinated, which is a dramatic change in thinking, and has huge implications for vaccine timetables, lockdowns ending and economies getting back on track. 

The market is currently rewarding the UK’s performance, when will it give the US, and the USD the credit it actually seems to deserve?
 
Global equity markets are off: Dow -0.4%, S&P 500 -0.5%, FTSE -1.4%, DAX -0.2%, CAC -0.4%, Nikkei -0.2%, Shanghai +0.6%.

Gold prices are up 0.1%, currently trading at $1,776 an ounce. WTI Crude Oil prices are off 0.2% trading at $60.66 a barrel my.


AUDUSD 0.7762 0.2%
AUDEUR 0.6423 -0.2%
AUDGBP 0.5555 -0.6%
AUDJPY 82.02 0.0%
AUDNZD 1.0764 -0.2%
GBPAUD 1.7996 0.6%

NZDUSD 0.7213 0.4%
NZDEUR 0.5968 0.1%
NZDGBP 0.5162 -0.4%
NZDJPY 76.21 0.2%
NZDAUD 0.9290 0.2%
NZDCAD 0.9155 0.3%
GBPNZD 1.9372 0.4%