Forex trading headlines for Asia Wednesday 7 May 2014
- RBNZ’s Wheeler: Says NZ dollar is overvalued
- RBNZ Wheeler: Says if the NZ dollar stays high in face of worsening fundamentals RBNZ could sell
- More from RBNZ governor Wheeler: Says terms of trade at 40-year high
- New Zealand data – Unemployment rate for Q1: 6.0% (expected is 5.8%, prior was 6.0%)
- Federal Reserve Stein: Market participants expect gradual taper to continueFederal Reserve Stein: Fed is not responsible for minimizing market volatilityUK data – BRC Shop Price Index: -1.4% y/y (expected -0.8%, prior was -1.7%)
- Australia – AIG Performance of Construction index for April: 45.9 (prior was 46.2)
- Japan data – Markit/JMMA Japan Services PMI for April: 46.4 (prior was 52.2)
- Bank of Japan (BOJ) minutes of April 7-8 meeting: Indicating it doesn’t see any need to step up its already aggressive policy
- Australia – Retail Sales for March: 0.1% m/m (expected 0.4%m/m)
- China HSBC/Markit services PMI: 51.4 (prior was 51.9)
EUR, GBP and CHF were all very quiet today, as is often so during the Asian timezone of late.
The Nikkei fell hard during the morning session in Tokyo. The Bank of Japan (BOJ) minutes of the April 7-8 meeting indicated (yet again) that the bank has no current intention of expanding its easing program (see bullets, above), which impacted on stocks. USD/JPY tends to fall as the Nikkei does, and today was no exception. But the move was minuscule, USD/JPY not even getting close to making a fresh low compared with the overnight lows.
NZD/USD, on the other hand, was a mover. RBZ governor Graeme Wheeler used his speech today to once again attemtp to talk the currency lower, with moderate success until his ‘intervention’ comment hit the wires (see bullets, above). This had more impact, sending the kiwi below 0.8700, from where it bounced 0.8720 and then fell away again back below the figure. It spent the rest of the session in a tight range around 0.9869095 and it slightly higher now (back above 0.8700) as I type.
AUD/USD had a lacklustre range in comparison, ever-so-slowly wafting down from near its overnight high. It dipped below 0.9335 momentarily on the release of the retail sales data but soon settled in a tight range around 0.9340 for the balance of the session (as of writing).