Typical Long USDCNH breakout playUSD tightening policy vs CNH easing policy
Inflation is like an illness, and medicine needs to be tailored to the specific problem. Both countries policies are deployed to aid individual domestic economy. And right now, the Fed has no control over the main driver of rising prices, however data suggest that domestic economy allows for Fed to press on tightening policies while closely monitoring signs of industrial recession. On the other hand, China is behind inflation and GDP target, and PBOC has reiterate on easing monetary policies to focus on lowering cost of covid controls while stimulating effective demands. We expect to see more fiscal aid coming from Chinese government in second half 2022 to support economic growth.
Upcoming U.S PMI and CPI data will give more colors to dollar strength, with stronger data pointing to dollar strengthening together with more liquidity assistance by PBOC, we are likely to see short term USDCNH strengthening towards 6.9x over the next few months; in line with forward premium rate follow by USDCNH retracement in late 2022 due to peak inflation and China domestic recovery leading the economy.
We expect the release of China’s fiscal policy to be the trigger for this possible upcoming breakout of USDCNH, with more injected liquidity into the system that weakens RMB. While dollar side movement had been somewhat priced for 75bps next Fed meeting together with projected Fed Dot Plot, the remaining moving factor ceteris paribus shall fall on RMB side of story.