Forex news for Asia trading Wednesday 01 April 2020

Today brought a series of manufacturing PMIs from Asian countries, via Markit. All worsened on the month, except for Taiwan and China. South Korea's result was notable, its 44.2 was worse than any during the tech slump or trade war. See the bullets above for the China and Japan results (Australia also).

Also out during the session were Reserve Bank of Australia minutes from the emergency March (18th) meeting (which ushered in a rate cut and QE).

On the news we are all focused on right now, the daily US coronavirus briefing painted a dour picture for the country, White House projections of the death toll are between 100,00 and 240,000 people. Let's hope that is not going to happen, but infections are yet to peak in the country and as I update the current total number of deaths is on approach to 4,000.

Forex news for Asia trading Wednesday 01 April 2020 .

Across FX it was a mixed bag.

USD/JPY dipped to lows under 107.30 before recovering. Its the first day of the new fiscal year for Japan and we await further announcements from the Japanese government on the fiscal support plan ahead. The BOJ Tankan report was soft indeed with sentiment readings amongst manufacturing and services firms at around 6 year lows. USD/JPY bounced to highs above 107.90, falling short of testing 108.00.

EUR/USD was not where the action was, it maintained a range centring circa 1.1020 or so. Cable fell again below 1.2400. There were no specific news items for GBP of note.

AUD/USD and NZD/USD are a little weaker also, but the ranges were small compared with what we have seen recently.

Gold and oil both showed some buying pressure but without big moves. The oil inventory data out in the US afternoon late showed a huge inventory build. A few hours after the data comments crossed from Trump on discussions between Russia and Saudi (see bullets above).