After initial massive sell offs in the morning the Hungarian forint corrected back and regain some strength against euro again and hovering between 267.4 and 269 for the rest of the day. As emerging markets currencies (particularly the Turkish lira) consolidate their fall at the end of the domestic trading, the EUR/HUF pair bounced back even stronger and closed in the 266 area. As we had already mentioned the day before the Hungarian forint is always hit badly when sentiment in some of the high-yielding emerging market turns suddenly negative, because of similarities with high C/A deficit problems The sell-off which had been seen since in the Hungarian FX market was a typical example of such a situation.
Today, the main domestic eye-catcher is a preliminary release of GDP growth for the first quarter. Although the figure came exactly in line with the market consensus (4.5% y/y), we think it is quite disappointing given strong monthly data coming from the domestic industry in the first quarter (an upward revision following detail GDP figures could eventually come). All in all, the figure should be neutral to the market, while a development in emerging markets sentiment should be decisive.
(CSOB - Investment research)