The Kiwi pair bears the burden of the downbeat prints of New Zealand’s fourth quarter Gross Domestic Product , as well as the market’s fears emanating from the latest bank fallouts in the US and Europe. It’s worth observing that the headlines suggesting improvements in economic conditions of China, one of New Zealand’s key customers, seem to join sluggish yields to probe the bears in the last few hours.
Earlier in the day, NZ Q4 GDP slid to -0.6% QoQ versus -0.2% market forecasts and 2.0% previous readings. Further, the YoY figures also eased to 2.2% compared to the 3.3% expected and 6.4% in previous readings.
Elsewhere, the latest fears emanating from Europe’s G-SIB – a global systemically important bank, namely Credit Suisse, renew fears of the 2008 financial crisis as it follows fallouts of the US banks, namely Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
On the positive side, news that Credit Suisse eyes borrowing up to CHF50 billion from the Swiss National Bank to strengthen liquidity gained major attention and allowed NZD/USD bears to take a breather. On the same line could be the news that anonymous sources conveyed that the US banks are less vulnerable to the Credit Suisse debacle. Furthermore, the emergency talks by the