Forex news for Asia trading Thursday 15 January 2015
- Australia reported largest two-month gain in jobs since late 2006. Are the numbers believable?
- “China’s yuan shifts into currency major league”
- Kuroda doesn’t discuss consumer prices in speech … for the first time
- Bank of Korea leaves rates unchanged, but cuts growth and inflation forecasts
- Reserve Bank of India unexpectedly cuts interest rates
- Australian employment data – economist reactions
- HSBC – RBA’s easing phase is done
- China new yuan loans 697.3bn yuan (880.0 bn expected) + more
- Credit Suisse … chance of a rate cut at the RBA February meeting has halved
- New Zealand REINZ Residential house price price index for December: -1.0% m/m (prior +3.3%)
- “Australian housing prices among world’s most expensive”?
- RBC comments on ECJ decision
- Australia – Employment Change: +37.4K (vs. expected 5.0K)
- Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Kuroda on the wires now – comments
- The AUDUSD sets up at the neutral area ahead of the Employment report
- More from ANZ – expect AUD/USD to fall to 74 cents
- UK data – RICS House Price Balance for December: +11% (vs. expected 10%)
- Central banker activity in the Asian timezone today – plenty coming up from the BOJ
- Deutsche Bank says RBNZ will leave cash rate at 3.5% until 2016
- ANZ Bank forecasts RBA to cut cash rate by 0.5% in H1 of 2015
- Japan PPI for December: +1.9% y/y (vs. +2.1% expected)
- Japan – Machine orders for November: +1.3% m/m (vs. +4.4% expected)
- McKinsey says declining population could reduce global economic growth by 40%
- GM investment is a positive (but preliminary) sign for US capex
- WSJ: North Dakota’s Oil Production Rises to New Record
- “The $5 million bet against the S&P 500″
- Nikkei: Japan’s leading steelmakers seen lifting 9-month profit
- Moodys says the ECJ decision is a “boon” for future monetary policy
- China Securities Journal: Goldman Sachs sees China growth slowing to 7% in 2015
- New Zealand Food price index for December: +0.3% m/m (vs. prior -0.5%)
Once again it was all action in the Australian dollar today, but just to mix things up a little it moved higher today. Early moves were a tad weak, with news hitting the wires of ANZ revising its call for RBA rate hikes in 2015 to now expecting two cuts in the first half of this year and the AUD to therefore trade down to 74 US cents. Once the employment data was released, coming in much stronger than expected, AUD/USD moved up, hitting above 0.82 before dipping just below and then consolidating its gains to be back above 0.82 as I type.
NZD/USD was a little better bid … though there was plenty of NZD selling against the AUD today, which held NZD/USD to only barely higher on the session.
Elsewhere, yen was active again also, weakening today … USD/JPY tracking higher for much of the session but encountering resistance ahead of 117.85. Interestingly, Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Kuroda spoke at a BOJ branch managers’ meeting today, but reports said he he omitted reference to inflation for the first time (see bullets, above).
Once again, EUR, CHF and GBP not where the action was today.
Oil traded a little higher from its late US levels but gave it back. Gold is nearly unchanged on the session.
