Forex and Bitcoin news for Asia trading Tuesday 10 April 2018
- Chinese President Xi Jinping speaking - reform, opening up will succeed
- Australia March Business conditions 14 (prior 21) & Business confidence 7 (prior 9)
- PBOC sets USD/ CNY mid-point today at 6.3071 (vs. yesterday at 6.3114)
- Fed's Kaplan says too early to judge effect of tariff talk
- Australia - weekly ANZ Roy Morgan survey of consumer confidence: 115.1 (prior 115.5)
- More spending data from the UK: +2.0% y/y in March (vs. +3.8% prior)
- UK data: BRC Like-for-like sales for March: +1.4% y/y (vs. expected at -0.1%)
- Trump on Syria - We’re going to make a decision tonight or shortly thereafter
- NZD - NZIER business confidence survey for Q1 2018: -11 (prior -12)
- Trade ideas thread - Tuesday 10 April 2018
The keynote speech from Chinese President Xi Jinoing at the Boao Forum in China was keenly awaited and the market was not disappointed. Not at all.
I noted during the speech that it was boring. Rude of me, I know, but this is what the market wanted, with feel good mumblings on opening the economy, better IP protection and so forth. And, importantly, most importantly, Xi was cool and calm (someone could learn something from this ... but then it'd be a lot less fun, right?) and avoided inflammatory trade war rhetoric.
Markets smiled, sending 'risk' higher. AUD/JPY is a useful gauge of risk ... AUD was bought, yen was sold .... and we all lived happily ever after. Well, for now at least. Here is the chart I posted of AUD/JPY as the speech wound down - surge!:
Overnight trade on US equity futures was positive in response also
Elsewhere, relevant news and data flow was light. There was no military strike in Syria, as some had feared.
In Australia we got the anticipated monthly data on business conditions and data, with a drop on both, but both still at decent levels (historically). The previous month was a record high for 'conditions' so a pullback was not too surprising, and the AUD shrugged it off.
NZD is higher on the session, also shrugging off some data (see bullets above). USD/CHF has added a few points while EUR and GBP are both only little changed also against the USD. CAD is stronger against the USD, USD/CAD is near a session low as I post.
Still to come:
- Forex option expiries for expiry at 10am NY time on Tuesday 10 April 2018
- Data due from the US Tuesday - PPI (ahead of Wednesday's CPI data) - preview
- US wants UN Security Council vote on Syria on Tuesday
- NZD traders: Heads up for RBNZ McDermott speech added to schedule (Thursday)
- Heads up for China credit data due in coming days
