Forex news for Asia trading Friday 6 October 2017

Pre-NFP days in Asia are often subdued, but not today. The Australian dollar is a big lower, extending its falls from yesterday (post dreadful retails sales data) and overnight. We had lower tier data early, which did not have much of an impact,, but a Wall Street Journal report on comments from Reserve Bank of Australia policy board member Ian Harper cut some of the support from it. AUD/USD hadn't managed to get its nose back above 0.7800 throughout the morning here and on the RBA remarks it slid under 0.7780 and thence lower as the session progressed to circa 0.7745 (just under there). Its just above 0.7750 as I update.

AUD crosses are lower alongside.

CAD lost some ground against the USD, USD/CAD up around 25-odd points from its session low. NZD/USD has hung in better, down around 10 points on the session.

USD/JPY has done little today, its edged sideways around 112.80 or so.

We got some labour market data from Japan today, and some political news (see bullets above).

EUR and CHF both lost a few points against the USD on no news flow of note, GBP also (some early political news re May as PM ... ongoing).