Forex news for Asia trading Tuesday 03 February 2015
Reserve Bank of Australia CUTS RATES by 25bps to 2.25%, a record low
- Full text of the RBA statement February 3, 2015
- Plenty of jawboning, little guidance in RBA statement
- Forex technical trading: AUDUSD tumbles to new lows going back to May 2009 on RBA cut
- Australia Building approvals for December: -3.3% m/m (expected -5.0%)
- Australia – Trade balance for December: -436m (vs. expected -850m)
- Australia – ANZ Roy Morgan weekly Consumer Sentiment: 112.4 (prior 113.2)
- Australian Treasurer Hockey: Expects global economic forecasts to fall
- Australia press: Green light to two big coal mine expansions
Other
- Russia – Gazprom to slash 2015 capex by almost $8 bln
- PBOC to inject funds today …also yuan mid-point set at 6.1369
- Where to for the EUR/USD? – Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and BoA/ML weigh in
- New Zealand – ANZ Commodity price index: -0.9% (prior -4.4%)
- EUR/USD – parity by year end!
- Japan – Monetary base for January: +37.4% y/y (prior 38.2%)
- UBS comments on positioning in the gold market … ” risk of a washout up ahead”
- New Zealand – QV house prices for January: +5.7% y/y (prior +4.9%)
- Nikkei: Japan’s real GDP grew 0.3% in December: JCER
It was a waity day (yes, waity …. if its not a real word, it should be) in Asia today as we waited (get it?) on the Reserve Bank of Australia decision after their first monetary policy board meeting of 2015. There were a few minor wriggles in currencies ahead of the announcement, with USD/JPY higher to test 117.70 and EUR/USD and cable slightly better bid also.
AUD and NZD were, as expected ahead of a meeting with a much more unpredictable outcome than recent RBA meetings, thin and nervous, with wider spreads and jumpy sort of activity.
Heading into the RBA meeting market consensus was mixed, with the majority in the most recent Bloomberg survey expecting a hold today (but many more expecting a cut come March) while market pricing was slightly in favour of a cut today, priced at around a 60-odd percent probability.
As you can see above, the decision was a 25 basis point cut, which sent the AUD much lower, through 0.77 against the USD, weighing on the kiwi also.
USD/JPY fell through 117 again, while EUR and GBP gave back some ground also, to just below their earlier lows.
Oil consolidated around $50 for much of the session, while gold was also pretty much sideways around 1274.
Still to come: New Zealand dollar traders – dairy auction tonight
