Articles

NZ Finance Minister Nicola Willis pre-bidget speech – said Treasury’s latest forecasts show New Zealand’s economy is still expected to grow in the coming year, but worsening conditions — particularly following President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs — have dampened the outlook, cutting expected GDP growth for 2025 and 2026.

She warned that weaker growth risks derailing the government’s fiscal strategy, potentially delaying the return to surplus.
Originally, Treasury had forecast a surplus by 2029, but Willis aims to achieve it a year earlier.

Willis noted that the limited new spending in this Budget means Treasury’s latest projections — though not final — still show a surplus in 2029.

She stressed that had the government allowed for greater spending, it would have led to even larger deficits and rising debt, given the global economic headwinds.

This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at www.forexlive.com.

The major US stock indices are closing mixed/little changed in up-and-down trading today. A late day rally took the price back into positive territory for both the Dow and the S&P indices. The NASDAQ index so close marginally lower but well off its lows for the day. The final numbers are showing:

• Dow industrial average rose 114.09 points or 0.28% at 40227.59. The index was down -244.40 point at session lows.
• S&P index rose 3.54 points or 0.06% at 5528.75. The index was down -56.57 points at session lows.
• NASDAQ index fell -16.81 points or -0.10% at 17366.13. The index was down -254.23 points at session lows.

This week is a huge week for earnings with no fewer than 12 of the 30 Dow companies reporting. Four of the Magnificent 7 will release with Apple, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft all scheduled.

Today:

• Apple rose $0.86 or 0.41% at $210.14
• Meta rose $2.41 or 0.44% at $549.68.
• Microsoft felt $-0.69 or -0.18% at $391.18.
• Amazon felt $-1.31 for -0.70% at $187.68

This article was written by Greg Michalowski at www.forexlive.com.

Good morning, afternoon and evening all. Any charts, technical analysis, trade ideas, thoughts, views, ForexLive traders would like to share and discuss with fellow ForexLive traders, please do so:

This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at www.forexlive.com.

This week no fewer than 12 of the Dow 30 stocks will be announcing earnings this week including Coca Cola, Visa and Mastercard, Caterpillar, Apple and Amazon. . Below is the complete list, days and times for those releases.

Tuesday:

Before Open:

• UPS (UPS)

• Coca-Cola (KO)

After Close:

• Visa (V)

Wednesday:

Before Open:

• Caterpillar (CAT)

After Close:

• Microsoft (MSFT)

Thursday:

Before Open:

• Eli Lilly (LLY) (recent Dow addition)

• Mastercard (MA)

• McDonald’s (MCD)

After Close:

• Apple (AAPL)

• Amazon (AMZN) (recent Dow addition)

Friday:

Before Open:

• ExxonMobil (XOM)

• Chevron (CVX)

In addition to the those 12, other big names include Pfizer, Starbucks, Bookings Holdings, Hess, Meta, and Qualcomm.

Below is the full list by day and time of some of the major releases this week:

Monday (After Close):

• Waste Management (WM)

• NXP Semiconductors (NXPI)

• Teradyne (TER)

• Nucor (NUE)

Tuesday:

Before Open:

• PayPal (PYPL)

• UPS (UPS)

• Coca-Cola (KO)

• Pfizer (PFE)

• Royal Caribbean (RCL)

• SoFi (SOFI)

• JetBlue (JBLU)

• Spotify (SPOT)

• Shift4 Payments (FOUR)

• Altria (MO)

After Close:

• Visa (V)

• Starbucks (SBUX)

• Snap Inc. (SNAP)

• First Solar (FSLR)

• PPG Industries (PPG)

• Booking Holdings (BKNG)

Wednesday:

Before Open:

• Humana (HUM)

• Caterpillar (CAT)

• Western Digital (WDC)

• International Paper (IP)

• ADP (ADP)

• Hess (HES)

• GE HealthCare (GEHC)

After Close:

• Microsoft (MSFT)

• Meta Platforms (META) (not Dow 30 now but relevant )

• Robinhood (HOOD)

• Qualcomm (QCOM)

• Green Brick Partners (GRBK)

• Albemarle (ALB)

• Pilgrim’s Pride (PPC)

• Annaly Capital (NLY)

• Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CP)

• Prudential (PRU)

Thursday:

Before Open:

• Eli Lilly (LLY) (joining Dow recently)

• Roblox (RBLX)

• CVS Health (CVS)

• Mastercard (MA)

• SiriusXM (SIRI)

• McDonald’s (MCD)

• Baxter (BAX)

• Shake Shack (SHAK)

After Close:

• Amazon (AMZN) (joining Dow recently)

• Apple (AAPL)

• Airbnb (ABNB)

• Reddit (RDDT)

• AIG (AIG)

Friday (Before Open):

• ExxonMobil (XOM)

• Chevron (CVX)

• AES Corp (AES)

• Brookfield (BEP)

• Magna (MGA)

• Apollo Global Management (APO)

• Cigna (CI)

• Wendy’s (WEN)

• FuboTV (FUBO)

This article was written by Greg Michalowski at www.forexlive.com.

• Sees $514 billion in Q2 borrowing
• Previously saw $123 billion
• Assumes end-of-quarter balance of $850 billion

The Treasury says ” The borrowing estimate is $391 billion higher than announced in February 2025, primarily due to the lower beginning-of-quarter cash balance and projected lower net cash flows, partially offset by lower Federal Reserve System Open Market Account (SOMA) redemptions ($60 billion)” but also adds “Excluding the lower than assumed beginning-of-quarter cash balance, the current quarter borrowing estimate is $53 billion lower than announced in February.”

I wouldn’t get too excited about the shift but it raises the stakes for Wednesday’s quarterly refunding announcement at 8:30 am ET ( the same time as Q1 GDP).

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.

US dollar selling and gold buying took a break last week but they’ve both returned today in tandem. The optimism about a quick resolution to tariffs is fading and the market is feeling angst about US growth again.

That has gold up $31 today to $3349, which gets the market back to where it opened the day on Friday.

Gold fell hard early last week after touching a record $3501 last Monday. The big figure likely led to a wave of profit taking that quickly landed gold at $3259. That low has held on two further tries while gold has been unable to break the 61.8% retracement at $3380.

I think those two numbers now define a short-term trading range for gold and we will likely be waiting for tariff news to break it and send gold back up to the highs at $3500 or down to some moderate support near $3180.

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was seemingly on TV daily in the lead-up to Liberation Day and just afterwards. He delivered a belligerent message and promised that the ‘reciprocal tariffs’ wouldn’t be walked back (they were).

Lutnick is a grating personality and has been loose with his words and his criticism of trading partners, causing frequent ripples in markets in his short term so far.

Evidently, that landed him in the penalty box, as he hasn’t been on TV since the day Trump called off reciprocal tariffs, something he’s tried to take credit for.

Markets have calmed since then but Lutnick now appears to be out of the penalty box as he is scheduled on CNBC for the 2 pm ET hour on Tuesday.

I don’t see a big risk around it but I fear that it means Trump believes the worst is over for equity markets and tariffs.

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.

Canadians are voting today in an election that’s been dominated by antagonism and threats of annexation from the President of the United States.

In general, the stakes are low for the Canadian dollar. That’s in large part because the Liberals switched leaders to Mark Carney and he’s moved the Liberal platform much closer to the Conservatives, so much so that a talking point in the campaign was that he was stealing the Conservative platform. Carney is also a former central banker and that has the market confident he won’t do anything particularly damaging to the economy.

The results of the election should be clear between 9-11 pm ET and note that there are no exit polls in Canada, so we will have to wait for the votes to come in. This one could come down to what happens on the west coast so that could make for a long night.

I tend to think that some stability would serve CAD best at the moment and that looked like a Conservative majority a few months ago but the polls made a dramatic shift to the Liberals after the leadership change and Conservatives bungling the message with Trump.

Here are outcome probabilities based on polling numbers and compiled by the CBC.

The outcome I believe that could offer some downside in the loonie (in the 50-120 pip range) is a Liberal minority held up by the NDP. That would essentially extend the current status quo and leaves the Liberals at the mercy of the left-leaning NDP.

Now that outcome could be mitigated if the NDP leader resigns later, something that would probably buy a year of free reign for the Liberals but would still constrain them from taking any strong steps to boost domestic productivity.

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.

• Trump wants tax cuts in this reconciliation package

I think we’ve had enough teases about trade deals, they’re not market moving headlines anymore.

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.

The US first quarter GDP report is proving to be one of the toughest ones for economists to forecast since the pandemic. The range from professional economists is -1.5% to +1.7% and the range from models is even wider.

Now I would argue that there is so much noise in the report that it shouldn’t be a market mover, particularly since the revisions to the advance report can be large in the prelim and final data. Moreover, what the market should really be concerned about is how tariffs impact the economy, not about what happened in January.

In any case, I suspect it will be a market mover anyway or at least a talking point in political circles.

The most-closely followed model of GDP is from the Atlanta Fed as it’s had a good track record in predicting the advance readings, and it was also the first regional central bank to dive in. It’s model is at -2.5% but it accounts for gold imports, which should be adjusted and bring that to -0.4%.

In contrast, the reading from the NY Fed is +3.1% and Atlanta Fed is at +2.6%, both way above consensus, which is at +0.3%.

Finally, note that on Tuesday (the day before GDP), we get US data on trade balance for March and wholesale inventories for the same month. Those will be critical last-day indications for GDP and could lead to large swings in what’s expected from the market.

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.

FoxBusiness Charlier Gasparino is X-ing on the Japan tariff deal and tariff concerns:

• There is a hold-up in the Japan tariff deal over the level of commitment to buy oil from the Alaska pipeline.

• Howard Lutnick remains a key player in tariff negotiations and recently argued to a lawmaker that tariffs won’t cause inflation.

• GOP lawmakers are voicing real concerns about tariff-related inflation and a potential economic slowdown, with impacts already being felt in Middle America.

• Wall Street CEOs say the next 6–8 weeks will be pivotal in determining how big an impact tariffs will have on the economy.

• Story is still developing.

The full tweet/X

This article was written by Greg Michalowski at www.forexlive.com.

The Nasdaq opened at the best levels since Liberation Day today but that’s been followed by a decent reversal with the index now down 1.0%.

The question for investors right now is whether it’s best to bail after a return to pre-tariff levels or whether a new bull market has started?

I don’t think the bulls can maintain the upper hand until we get an answer to this question: What are the tariffs for?

1. To raise US government revenue
2. To re-write trade deals and open markets to US exporters

The latter case is the one you hope for as it would ultimately result in a world with lower tariffs and that would benefit US corporations, particularly the large multinationals that dominate the index.

But if the goal is to raise revenue, then it argues that tariffs are permanent and in that case, we will end up in a place where other countries raise tariffs in retaliation or at the very least, there is less policy certainty.

On the weekend, Trump again pointed to the revenue side.

That’s worrisome but the real answer will come when we finally get a fresh US trade deal, something Bessent said could happen in the next week or two.

If that results in lowering tariffs on both sides, and the US drops its own tariffs down to 0% (rather than a 10% floor), I think the bull market continues. But if we get a 10% floor, I just can’t see the US making many deals.

This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.