Most of the market once again got today’s Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) decision badly wrong. The “no change” decision saw USD/SGD move swiftly from 1.2285 to just below 1.2200 before coming up for air. The rest of the USD/AXJ complex fell in sympathy which in turn underpinned EUR/USD, AUD/USD and USD/JPY. The MAS pointed at persistent price pressures in the domestic economy preferring to use as a fall-back the latest monetary efforts from the Fed, ECB, BOJ et al. Singapore’s Q4 GDP fell 1.5% QoQ but the island state dodged a technical recession when Q2 GDP was revised to up 0.2%.
