Early Morning Call: AUD falls after RBA keeps rates on hold

The Reserve Bank of Australia

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) says it needs more time to assess the impact of past hikes. Therefore, the RBA decided to hold rates at 4.1% but didn't rule out further tightening should it be needed to fight inflation further. The AUD fell across the board on the news.

Germany's trade surplus

Germany's trade surplus has fallen to levels not seen in five months. Surplus fell to €14.4 billion in May as exports fell 0.1% month-over-month (MoM) with imports rising to 1.7% in May after a 3.1% rise in the previous months.

Sainsbury

Elsewhere on the equity market, Sainsbury's is sticking to its financial guidance for the year after reporting a rise in sales in the first quarter. Britain's second-largest supermarket chain said underlying sales rose 9.8% in the first three months of its fiscal year. Argo's sales rose 5.1% and Sainsbury's expects underlying pretax profit between £640 million and £700 million in FY 2023–24. Ryanair traffic rose 9% in June to 17.4 million passengers. The load factor remained at 95%.

Meta

Meta Platforms expects to launch a new app on Thursday. It is called Threads, and it is a platform where users will publish, share, or like short messages. This Twitter rivalry couldn't come at a worse time for Elon Musk, as his users are growing unhappy over his management of Twitter. Days ago, Musk announced a temporary cap on how many posts users could read on the social media site. Threads will be directly linked to Instagram, which means using the same username and easily porting Instagram followers across to the new application.

Coinbase

Coinbase shares rose as much as 13% in Monday's session after the exchange operator Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) said it was working with Coinbase to launch a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). On Friday, CBOE was asked by the SEC to refill its application because it didn't name in the previous one the crypto platform that would help the exchange police manipulation in the ETF.

Oil exports

Saudi Arabia and Russia, two of the world's largest oil producers, said they would cut supplies further. OPEC+ has already been cutting production to boost prices since November last year, but so far it has failed to push them higher. Saudi Arabia's voluntary oil output cut of one million barrels per day will be extended for another month to include August, and it doesn't rule out extending beyond that month.

As for Russia, oil exports will be cut by 500,000 barrels per day in August. 1.5 million barrels that amount to 1.5% of global supply, which will be added to the 3.66 million bop cuts already in place since April.