The Hungarian forint came under heavy selling pressure and lost around two percent against the euro yesterday as rising yields in core bond markets have made life for high-yielding currencies tougher., Rising yields in the US and EMU have reduced global risk appetite, the forint, like for instance the Icelandic crown, suffered heavy losses on Monday. Looking at the intra-day development: the EUR/HUF opened at the 259.0 level and the pair immediately turned north. Just around the noon EUR/HUF easily broke above the 260 resistance, while the new two-year high (264.25) was reached in early afternoon. The accelerator for further heavy selling was a comment made by Finance Minister Veres, who said that the recent weakening of the forint is a regional feature. The FX market seems to be disappointed by these words, because it had probably expected something else from the Finance Minister. Facing the weakening domestic currency government officials should rather deliver some promise in terms of fiscal consolidation and not to blame other markets from forint’s depreciation.
Today, the forint began again deep in negative territory. There has been a disappointing release of the February CPI report (month-on-month inflation rose by 0.2%, while the market expected zero), which triggered further selling and EUR/HUF has already tested the 265.0 level. Later on, however, the focus will be rather on core bond markets. Should the yields continue to rise in US and EMU, the recent bullish sentiment would remain intact and further losses would be ahead of us. Otherwise, the EUR/HUF resistance standing now at 265.50 might survive at least for a while.
(CSOB - Investment research)