Forex news for Asia trading Tuesday 13 January 2015

Japanese markets reopened today after a long weekend. The Nikkei opened lower and spent the day heavy; Japanese bond yields fell, and the yen gained.

USD/JPY traded very heavily, triggering stop loss sellers below 118.25 and again below 118.00 before finally settling sideways below and then around 118. USD/JPY is recovering some of its losses as i post the wrap, back toward 118.25 as I write. EUR/JPY fell again, too, but recovered with a bid in EUR/USD helping it along before USD/JPY recovered a little. Cable found a bit of buying after early lows but settled more or less unchanged from where I walked in.

AUD/USD traded back to just under overnight lows in the late Sydney morning but staged a solid rally all the way back to nearly 0.8200. Chinese trade data (see bullets, above) didn’t do it any harm. The NZD/USD traded down a little in the early going too, but stayed well ahead of overnight lows before ticking back over 0.7800. It gave a little back to be more or less unchanged from where I first saw it this morning.

Oil lost more ground during the session, gold tested to 1239 and just slightly above (albeit briefly), its highest since October 2014.