Forex news for Asia trading Wednesday 3 December 2014
- New Zealand Q3 Construction work +1.5% q/q (vs. +2.6% expected)
- SEK – Swedish PM says no progress in budget talks with opposition
- Australia – AiG services PMI for November: 43.8 (prior 43.6)
- Goldman Sachs – At 85 cents the RBA views the Australian dollar as still overvalued
- UK – British Retail Consortium (BRC) Shop Price Index: -1.9% y/y (prior -1.9%)
- Q3 GDP from Australia: +0.3% q/q (vs. expected +0.7%)
- Australian Q3 GDP comes in at less than half expectations – analyst comments
- What does the RBA need to see for a rate cut? Or … what do they need to hike?
- China Services PMI for November: 53.9 (prior was 53.8)
- New Zealand Finance minister English: Forecast of 2.75% GDP growth in 2016 is `optimistic’
- JAPAN Markit services PMI for November: 50.6 (prior 48.7)
- China HSBC services PMI: 53.0 (prior 52.9)
USD/JPY edged higher in Asia today, eating into sellers ahead of 119.50 and dragging most yen crosses higher (EUR, GBP etc. were all tightly sideways against the USD).
Apart from the yen the other notable movers were AUD and NZD.
Both were weak leading into the Asian session, and the weakness continued.
AUD was hit hard, dropping 50+ points on the release of very disappointing Q3 GDP data (see bullets, above). The currency stabilized somewhat, with bids at and around 0.8400 halting the drop, but its below the figure as I type and with renewed chatter of the potential for rate cuts its difficult to see it rallying too hard into the Europe/UK session.
Asian equities had a strong session. As of writing …
- China’s Shanghai Composite up 2% (to the highest since July 2011)
- The Nikkei 225 +1%
- Australia’s S&P/ASX200 +0.5%
Oil and gold were mainly sideways today.
