Forex trading headlines for Asia Thursday 28 August 2014
- Japan Buying Foreign Bonds, Y -609.0B (plus, the rest of this data)
- Australia – HIA New Home Sales for July: -5.7% (prior was +1.2%)
- Australia Private Capital Expenditure for Q2: +1.1% q/q (expected -0.9%)
- China Industrial profits YTD for July: +13.5% (prior was +17.9%)
- Westpac cut Australia Q2 GDP forecast
- Bloomberg: Reserve Bank of New Zealand sold NZ$2m in July
After a sedate early morning the USD weakened across the board as more of Asia became active. There was no news catalyst seemingly driving the move, but all the majors gained against the USD. EUR/USD tested 1.3215 and hasn’t pulled back to much of an extent at all after doing so.
The release of the Australian Q2 capex data (see bullets, above), with a better headline result (but the details … not so much) driving the AUD up to touch briefly above 0.9370. Weaker plant and equipment details in this data have seen analysts revise down their expectations for Q2 GDP.
The NZD gained with the weaker USD again today, topping out above 0.8400 and stabilising just below there as I type. RBNZ FX data was released again today, and again showed no intervention for the past month (i.e. July). Speculation continues, though, the latest being the RBNZ may have sold on Monday morning this week. We won’t know for sure until the next round of RBNZ FX market transactions are released on September 29.
