Forex news for Asia trading Tuesday 1 September 2020

AUD traders - heads up for the Reserve Bank of Australia policy announcement due soon

An announcement from vaccine developer AstraZeneca set a supportive stage for risk as US markets shut down for the day and very early Asia kicked off in NZ and Australia. Upon reopening though overnight US stock index trade was a touch weaker, but soon recovered.

Currencies had some minor shuffling about but net have gained strongly (for an Asian session) against the big $ on the day. Cable is at its highest since December of last year, AUD/USD has surpassed its overnight high (highest for two years) while offshore yuan gained to its best since July 2019.

CAD, yen, CHF, NZD are all up against the USD on the session also.

And EUR? Up against the USD also, falling just shy of testing the 1.2 level where large option interest is holding it for now. Asia rarely has the firepower to take on such big levels, but it does seem to be just a matter of time (and cracking through the option defence).

Even gold had a good session.

News flow was limited but we did get a barrage of data, PMIs, Australian GDP 'partials' (inputs to the Q2 GDP due Wednesday) - all in the bullets above. But the story of the day is US dollar decline further.

Forex news for Asia tradingTuesday 1 September2020