Ella 
The NZD/USD pair broke its four-day losing streak following a speech by New Zealand Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr on Friday. Orr said the central bank expects to begin normalizing policy in 2025. As a result, NZD/USD climbed to around 0.6090 in Asia.
Governor Orr said that economic progress is in line with expectations and inflation expectations have declined. Although the inflation rate is still at a high level, it is on a downward trend. Orr stressed that monetary policy needs to remain restrictive for some time. He also expressed expectations for a pickup in economic growth in 2024.
The U.S. dollar index was slightly lower, hovering around 104.10, despite improvements in U.S. Treasury yields, with the two-year Treasury yield at 4.63% and the 10-year Treasury yield at 4.25% at press time. However, following the release of U.S. gross domestic product data, the market postponed expectations for the timing of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cut, boosting the dollar.
The dollar strengthened after the U.S. personal consumption expenditures price index, the inflation gauge favored by the Federal Reserve, was in line with expectations. The focus is on Friday’s final reading of the U.S. S&P Global Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index for February.
The annual rate of the U.S. personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index in January was 2.4%, lower than the previous value of 2.6%, in line with market expectations. The U.S. PCE price index recorded a monthly rate of 0.3%, compared with the previous value of 0.1%.
Meanwhile, the core PCE price index, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, came in at an annual rate of 2.8%, down slightly from December’s 2.9% rate and in line with consensus expectations. The core PCE price index increased 0.4% on the month, up from 0.1% in the previous month.
