Poor New Zealand Retail Sales

The New Zealand Retail Sales figures were released last night 6:45 pm EST. The previous figure was a healthy 1.3%, however, this month’s forecasted retail sales was expected to be completely flat at 0.0%. The actual released number was -1.2%, resulting in the NZD taking a substantial hit.

As my fellow recommendation expert, David Leja, had pointed out, “With 3 interest rate hikes in the past 13 weeks, consumer demand will probably slow down enough to make this rate of change negative. The effects of the rate hikes can be seen in consumer confidence reports. One such report shows that nearly 40% of the public has grim outlooks for the economy in the next 12 months.”

 Traders saw to take advantage of these weak retail sales numbers by heavily shorting the NZD.

 The View: