Forex trading headlines for Asia Friday 30 May 2014
- New Zealand – April Building Consents: 1.5% m/m (vs. expected -3.5%)
- UK data – GfK Consumer Confidence for May: 0 (vs. expected -2 )
- Japan – Overall Household Spending for April: -4.6% y/y (vs. expected -3.4%)
- Japan – Jobless Rate for April: 3.6% (expected 3.6%)
- Japan – National CPI for April: 3.4% y/y (vs. expected 3.4%) (plus the rest of the CPI data)
- Japan – Industrial Production for April (preliminary reading): -2.5% m/m (vs. expected -2.0%)
- Comments from Japanese finance minister Aso here and here
- And also comments from Mitsuhiro Furusawa, Japan’s Vice Minister of Finance
- Australia – Private Sector Credit for April: +0.5% m/m (expected 0.4%)
- Fed’s George: Predicts that the Federal Reserve to raise main rate faster than it forecast
- New Zealand M3 money supply for April: 5.3% y/y (vs. prior was +5.0%)
- China – Hangzhou officials have moved to stop developers cutting prices more than 15%
- IMF statement: No need for further BOJ easing now
- More from IMF’s Lipton: “If euro weakens as by-product it would be temporary”
- Crédit Agricole – Sees no more BOJ easing in the foreseeable future
USD/JPY gave a little ground today. Analysts perceived the CPI data results as lessening the chances of any imminent further easing from the BOJ. The move wasn’t large. off around 25 points toward European timezone lows, with support coming back in on the session around 101.45/50. EUR/JPY gave away some ground too, with little movement in the EUR/USD.
GBP/USD ground out a small gain, up around 20 points on the session.
NZD/USD was active, albeit in a not large range. it tested toward 0.8500 resistance in the early going after the better than expect building consents data, but was rejected ther again. Buyers emerged at 0.8475/80 and took it briefly above 0.85 before settling just below there as I write.
AUD/USD sneaked higher too. Early AUD/JPY (and NZD/JPY) helped it along, and it found buying above 0.9300 from the middle of the session on, but respected the selling around 0.9320.