Forex trading headlines for Asia Tuesday 18 February 2014
- Alcoa to shut smelter, mills in Australia
- Bundesbank widens boosting EUR liquidity & underlines the ECB’s commitment to accommodative
- BHP forecasts for economic growth and commodity prices
- Barclays views on EUR, GBP, JPY and AUD – technical analysis and strategies
- Japan finance minister Aso: GDP data shows Japan is gradually recovering
- RBA minutes: Sustained lower Australian dollar would assist balanced economic growth
- Chinese government officials more sceptical about foreign banks’ research – avoiding economists at global banks
- People’s Bank of China (PBOC) to drain 48bn yuan via 14-day repo today
- China – Foreign Direct Investment for January: 16.1% y/y (expected is 2.5%)
- Bundesbank’s Dombret Speaks in Tokyo: Fears of Japanese scenario for Euro area misplaced
- BOJ announcement: No changes to monetary policy, as expected. Expands loan program, and more here
- Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Kuroda will give his post meeting press conference, due at 0630GMT
GBP has been a hive of activity in Europe and the US, but not so much here today. It moved more than usual, but with no news of direct relevance it maintained a tight sort of range day (relatively speaking), ticking a little highre towards 1.6730.
EUR/USD, too, was not where the action was – but it too manage to gain a little bit of ground on the session.
The Swissie … a 15-point odd range.
Ahh, but what about that yen! USD/JPY ticked a little higher in the early going, finding sellers ahead of 102.20 and dropping away prior to the BOJ announcement. On the announcement it initially was marked down a few spreads on the ‘no change to monetary policy’ headlines, but rapidly gained ground again, the catalyst being said to be the expansion of a ‘cheap loans’ program from the BOJ (see bullets, above). Yen crosses surged too, of course. One wonders how much of the jump in yen crosses was due to the news of the program expansion … and how much just due to positioning and liquidity. Hmmmm.
AUD/USD swung around somewhat too today. The catalyst was the release of the February policy board meeting minutes. AUD/USD was initially marked down to just under 0.9020 before surging back to 0.9070 and then just above. There wasn’t a lot new in the minutes … and again one has to wonder how much of the jump was positioning-related. Hmmmm, again. (ps. – for the market historians, AUD/USD recorded a one-month high today).
The Kiwi was an interesting one. It moved a little higher with the AUD after the RBA minutes, but drifted back to record fresh session lows.
