Forex news for Asia trading Wednesday 5 November 2014
- New Zealand jobs data – Unemployment rate 5.4% (vs. 5.5% expected)
- Australia – AIG Performance of Services index for October: 43.6 (prior was 45.4)
- £109billion spent by the EU in 2013 was “affected by material error”
- Morgan Stanley say AUD fundamentals suggest further downside to 76 US cents
- Japan October monetary base +36.9% y/y (prior was +35.3% y/y)
- British Retail Consortium (BRC) Shop Price Index: -1.9% y/y (expected -1.7%)
- What is going on in China? Assessing progress on the Third Plenum, one year on
- BHP to export US oil without permit
- UBS project the RBNZ will keep cash rate at 3.5% until June 2015
- Amamiya comments in the Diet: Japan economy still half way to price target
- Japan September Labor Cash earnings +0.8% y/y (vs. expected +0.8%)
- China data – HSBC Services PMI for October: 52.9 (prior was 53.5)
- Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Kuroda: BOJ will check risks and adjust policy as needed
- BOJ’s Kuroda – TL;DR version …. “This isn’t your grandfather’s Bank of Japan”
- More from BOJ’s Kuroda – Don’t see any limits to future policy options
- Xinhua reports – PBOC Deputy Governor Liu Shiyu to leave the bank
- Preview – Australian employment report
In political news, the Republican Party in the US have won control of the Senate and therefore now control both houses of Congress. Reuters/IPSOS projects at least 52 seats now for the Rs.
USD/JPY was a notable gainer through the session, along with yen crosses broadly. there were plenty of comments from Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Kuroda, though not much new. USD/JPY ground its way through to above 114 again, (as of writing) amd EUR/JPY a good performance to be well above 143.00 now.
Cable gained a few ticks on the session (the only data release from the UK was the shop price index (see bullets, above) which dropped again.
EUR/USD was quiet, but up a tick or so net on the session.
AUD/USD found sellers from 0.8760 and after some sideways action after peaking there it is pretty much unchanged from where I walked in, down a spread or so.
Oil is basically unchanged on the session, gold lost a few more dollars.
USD/CAD had a bit of chop in a 20 point range.