Forex trading headlines for Asia Thursday 11 September 2014
- Australia data – Employment Change: +121 K (expected +15 K) (including how to make some sense from them)
- and more … Australia’s insane employment report … reactions
- & more Australian employment data … more reactions
- Australia employment – Westpac’s comments … “Really?”
- Australia employment – NAB’s comments … “but can you believe it?”
- Reserve Bank of New Zealand – leaves rates unchanged
- RBNZ’s Wheeler speaking now: Rate pause has nothing to do with election
- RBNZ: A Comparison of the Statements (July and September)
- Call for lower currency but more tightening to come has NZDUSD bouncing around
- RBNZ’s Wheeler: Sees potential for significant fall in the New Zealand dollar
- More on the RBNZ – ASB says to expect a more drawn out tightening cycle
- TD Securities change their forecast for the next RBNZ rate rise
- Westpac RBNZ forecast – updated further
- UK data – RICS House Price Balance: 40% (expected 47%)
- Japan data – Q3 Business Sentiment Index
- Japan Buying Foreign Bonds, Y 763.6B (plus, the rest of this data)
- Obama’s speech outlining his strategy against Islamic State
- Australia – Melbourne Institute Survey of Consumer Inflationary Expectations: 3.5% (prior was +3.1%)
- China CPI and PPI
Attention was in this little corner of the world today, with the RBNZ decision followed by the Australian employment report.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand kicked things off with a unanimously expected ‘no change’ decision which was nevertheless accompanied by governor Graeme Wheeler jawboning the New Zealand dollar lower (again). It dipped briefly below 0.8180 but bounced 40 points in the following hours before stabilising around 0.8200.
The Australian dollar had a dip along with the Kiwi, but not to the same extent, getting below 0.9140 for a few moments before stabilising around 0.9160, where it sat relatively placidly until the release of the employment report bombshell. Full details in the bullets above, but, in brief, the job creation figure was nearly 10 times the size of consensus expectation. the AUD/USD was marked up immediately on the huge surprise to touch above 0.9215 before it gave back more than half of its gain over the subsequent half-hour or so. It stabilised above 0.9190 and is just above there as I type.
With attention south of the equator, EUR,GBP, yen, CHF were all relatively subdued.
USD/CAD did manage to gain on the session, though, up 20-odd points from where I walked in this morning.
