RBNZ joins the chorus of doves -NZD is, by....>

FOREX: RBNZ joins the chorus of doves

-NZD is, by a distance, the poorest performer in G10 so far Wednesday. While

leaving its OCR unchanged at 1.75%, the RBNZ switched from a neutral policy

stance to stating that the more likely direction for rates is down. This saw

NZD/USD slip sharply, taking out the $0.69 and $0.68 handles as well as the

Mar14 low to bottom out at $0.6793. The switch to an outright dovish stance

clearly took markets by surprise and makes the RBNZ the latest major central

bank to join the chorus of doves.

-At the other end of the scale, SEK outperforms following yesterday's close

below the 50-dma, pressing EUR/SEK to the lowest levels since early February.

Consumer and economic confidence surveys released this morning were largely

favourable and put NOK/SEK on course to test the 1.0758 200-dma.

-The greenback is mixed-to-flat, with the USD index selling off overnight gains,

allowing USD traders to pick up where they left off.

-US trade balance and speeches from ECB's Lautenschlaeger, de Guindos, Mersch,

Villeroy and Fed's George are the calendar highlights.