The forex trading headlines for Asia trading today
- China: HSBC April Manufacturing PMI 50.4 (vs. 50.5 expected)
- Minutes of the April 3-4 BOJ Monetary Policy meeting were released today, with no surprises therein (Reuters wrap up)
- Japan April Monetary Base 23.1% y/y (vs. 19.8% prior). This is the second consecutive month of record highs for the monetary base.
- Australia March Building Approvals -5.5% m/m (vs. 1.0% expected)
- South Korea HSBC Manufacturing PMI 52.60 (vs. 52.00 prior)
- Australia Import price index for Q1 at 0.0% (flat) (vs. expected of -0.5%)
- Australia Export price index for Q1 at 2.8% (vs. 4.5% expected)
- New Zealand: ANZ April Commodity Price Index 12.6% (vs. 7.4% prior)
- PBOC set the yuan mid-point at 6.2082, the strongest fix ever
AUD/USD continued its European/US slide, albeit at a slower pace as March building approvals recorded a very big miss (see bullets, above) and the HSBC China Manufacturing PMI came in below expectations. It did find support around 1.0250 and just below but any attempt to move higher through the session ran into walls of offers. the OIS market is now pricing in the chance of a 25 basis point rate cut on May 7 (next Tuesday’s RBA meeting) at over 50%.
NZD/USD too, was active, sliding 25 points from its late new York high down to 0.8480.
USD/JPY tested the 97.00 bids yet again, but the level was staunchly defended (albeit in relatively thin trading for Tokyo, much of the market wishing they were already on their four-day weekend that starts Friday in Japan). 97.00 / 104.00 is still being talked about as the levels for a large DNT option.
GBP/USD and EUR/USD were both tightly range-bound, but drifted lower late in the session to head into respective support levels.
