Forex Flash: USD strengthens against metrics – ANZ

According to the ANZ Research Team, “Our broader view has been to anticipate, as the global economy repaired itself, that the US dollar would stay soft against a range of currencies, particularly those in Asia and the EUR; and for the AUD and NZD to remain at high levels despite stretched valuation metrics.” Against this view, the dollar has strengthened particularly strongly since early February, and against some currencies since early January. Following this, a consensus seems to have emerged that the dollar's strength has been driven by US recovery expectations, and that this strength is likely to persist.

This is not the first time in recent years that a relative growth argument for dollar strength has been consensus. For us the key question is whether the dollar has rallied because recovery expectations are gathering momentum and the US is leading those, or have recovery expectations in fact, suffered a setback, contrary to our cyclical expectations. In other words, is there something wrong with our framework, or has our macro call just suffered a bit of a setback?