Forex news for Asia trading Tuesday 16 December 2014
- Russia raises key rate at around 1am Moscow time … To 17% (from 10.5%)
- Citi and JP Morgan on the Russian central bank rate hike to 17%
- Australia – ANZ Roy Morgan weekly Consumer Sentiment: 110.2 (prior 110.4)
- BOJ Tankan – Companies see 1.4% y/y inflation in 1 year
- New Zealand Treasury half-year update out now & comments from English
- RBA Minutes out now: Further fall in Australian dollar needed for economy
- JAPAN – Markit/JMMA Manufacturing PMI for December, flash: 52.1
- HSBC China manufacturing PMI for December – FLASH: 49.5 (vs. 49.8 expected)
- China Foreign Direct Investment for November: +22.2% y/y (expected +1.1%)
- Goldman Sachs: “Still no fireworks in EURCHF, but certainly one for the radar…”
The Nikkei225 stock index in Japan continued to lose ground through the session today (as of writing), which in tunr weighed on USD/JPY.
As the USD/JPY fell, the USD lost ground pretty uch across the board with EUR, GBP AUD and NZD all ticking higher.
The HSBC flash China PMI (see bullets, above) came in at a contractionary reading – the first in 7 months. While it would be expected that the AUD woud fall on such news it had fell quite quickly in hte minutes leading up to the release, which was curious. It found a bid after the data and gained to new session highs (not by much) and i leave it in the upper end of the range. NZD/USD followed a similar pattern.
