The forex trading headlines for Asia trading today: Thursday 3 October, 2013
- Bank of England’s Paul Fisher comments to UK newspaper
- Wheeler warns of big rate hikes in New Zealand saw NZD higher
- Auckland real estate agent says September house sales fall 7.9% from August
- Moody’s on Italy: Political instability is a credit negative
- Australia: AIG Services PMI for September: 47.1, highest since March this year
- Japan Buying Foreign Bonds Y 672.1bn (previous week was Y 174.8bn) – positive flow for the 3rd consecutive week
- Japan Buying Foreign Stocks Y -49.2bn (previous week was Y -164.1bn)
- Foreign Buying Japan Bonds Y -146.9bn (previous week was Y -725.7bn)
- Foreign Buying Japan Stocks Y 341.4bn (previous week was Y 181.3bn)
- China services PMI for September: 55.4 (vs. prior of 53.9)
- HSBC raised China GDP growth forecast to 7.7% from 7.4%
- Moody’s lowered its outlook on Brazil to stable (from positive)
The American afternoon saw NZD charge higher on comments from RBNZ Governor Graeme Wheeler (see bullet, above), an NZD move that continued into the early Asian session, with NZD finally topping out above 0.8330 and coming back to settle above 0.8300.
USD/JPY drifted a little lower to 97.25/30 but soon enough found support from a rising Nikkei, with unconfirmed rumours doing the rounds of ‘price keeping operations’ out of Japan. Japanese names were, regardless, buyers of USD/JPY and EUR/JPY, which, combined with USD/JPY stops above 97.55/60 say USD/JPY higher on the session, with continued bidding through the Tokyo lunch supporting it. EUR/JPY approached 133 and expected resistance.
Unusually for the timezone, EUR/USD also found some movement, stop losses above 1.3600 proving attractive for buyers, which ran EUR/USD to 1.3623 high before drifting back toward 1.3600.
USD/CHF was more constrained, it did dip towards its overnight lows but failed to break them, finding 0.9000 support, EUR/CHF buyers ahead of 1.2210.
GBP/USD had a rangebound day, 1.6220/38 roughly the range.
AUD/USD, too, had a relatively range-bound, narrow-range session.
