FX round-up: Sterling flat as kiwi flies and rand soars

Sterling was flat against the dollar this evening, but down against a palette of commodity and other currencies after a largely quiet session on the in-out European Union referendum.

At about 17:00 BST, sterling was steady at $1.4545, but was down 0.38% at €1.2756. It ebbed on the yen, and also against the loonie, aussie, rand and kiwi, the latter two outperforming.

Britain's unit fell 1.33% to 21.3926 rand after Fitch became the third credit-rating agency to keep its outlook unchanged on South Africa, meaning the country has dodged 'junk' status.

Meantime, the kiwi nipped higher ahead of Reserve Bank of New Zealand's rates call tonight, with the market looking for a 25 basis points cut to 2%, with more expected later in 2016.

"The GBPUSD in general is experiencing nothing short of a wild roller-coaster rise," said FXTM chief market analyst Jameel Ahmad. This contrasted with the calm enveloping the cable tonight.

He further noted the previous two days' volatility, and traders are likely already looking towards a full palette of UK, US and Europe economic data on Thursday and Friday.

As it stood, sterling opened with a bang following heady UK manufacturing- and industrial-production data, but this was frittered away.

Tonight, crude held its gains above $50 a barrel -- West Texas Intermediate up 1.55% to $51.14 and Brent up 1.75% to $52.34 -- while safe-haven gold surged 1.3% to $1,263 an ounce.

This -- with copper and silver prices also up -- after last night's sell-off against almost the entire G10.

At 17:00 BST, the dollar-spot index was down 0.37% to $93.481, with the greenback falling against most other major crosses, and in particular the rand and kiwi.

"After Friday's very poor (non-farm payrolls) jobs report, if Job Openings are shown (today) to be soaring this could actually end up being very USD positive," said Monex Europe.

"It would suggest the labour market is tightening, which combined with yesterday's Labour Cost figures could still mean the (US) Federal Reserve has a strong case to raise rates."

Instead, US job openings for April at 5.67m were broadly in line with market views.

This against the backcloth of a dovish Fed chair Janet Yellen who recently flagged the potential for gradual US rate rises, following the shock US non-farm payrolls last week.

Markets have tended to interpret all of this as implying a rates hike might not occur in June, but perhaps in July. Some pundits were even looking as far out as September.