Forex headlines for January 13, 2014:

The FX market sniffed out the rout in stock markets before it hit. The pain in the yen crosses hit in Asia and again at the US stock market open but the FX held up relatively well despite the beating in equities.

USD/JPY touched 102.99 in early US trading then bounced to 103.39 and then slowly bled back to 102.86. The appetite to sell at these levels was lacking as the market hunkers down ahead of US retail sales on Tuesday.

The dollar generally suffered on risk aversion, rather than than the old ‘risk off’ trade that would hit commodity FX (and often the euro) harder. EUR/USD was surprisingly quiet. A break of the European lows led to a quick 20 pip decline to the low of the day at 1.3638 but the pair finishes the day virtually unchanged at 1.3672.

The Canadian dollar finally got off the mat. The BOC survey data was decent and that was all it took for a modest relief move to 1.0848 from 1.0915 at the start of US trading.

The Australian dollar broke above 0.9000 and sticky resistance at 0.9005 shortly after the weekly open and that was the signal for gains as the pair tracked as high as 0.9086.

EUR/CHF declined for the fourth consecutive day, falling to 1.2290 from 1.2340. All the of the declines came in US trading as the Swissy benefits from risk aversion.