Forex and Bitcoin news for Asia trading Wednesday 14 March 2018
- BOJ Kuroda: BOJ not at point to consider exit details as still far from inflation goal
- US Pennsylvania election ... a counting problem is preventing projections
- China data - Jan/Feb (combined) retail sales up 9.7% vs. expected at +9.8%
- PBOC sets USD/ CNY reference rate for today at 6.3205 (vs. yesterday at 6.3218)
- More on improving Australian consumer sentiment ... "slightly optimistic"
- Minutes of the BOJ January meeting out now
- Japan - Core Machinery Orders (January): +8.2% m/m (expected +5.2%)
- Australia data: Westpac Consumer Confidence index (March): +0.2% m/m (prior was -2.3%)
- Japanese press reports Toyota to raise base pay by 3.3% this year
- RBA's Kent: No reason why RBA moves have to be in 25bp increments
- Japanese government’s plans for the economy thrown into disarray by land scandal
- RBA Assist. Gov (Fin Mkts) Kent - full text
- NZ BoP Current Account for Q4: NZD -2.77bn (expected NZD -2.45bn)
- Senior US admin official - new tariffs on China expected in very near future
- OIL - private inventory data shows build in headline US crude inventory
- Jeff Gundlach says financial markets have moved to a regime of significant volatility
- More on the forex intervention in ARS - comments from Argentine central bank
- Brexit - Irish PM reiterates does not want a hard border with Northern Ireland
Cast your eye over forex movements in Asia and you'll be saying another typical tight range session here. And, you'd be right.
Still, plenty going on despite the little FX response:
- We got better consumer confidence data from Australia,
- a wider NZ current account (investment outflows a bigger than expected drain),
- comments from an RBA Assistant Governor,
- Base paJapan (at Toyota at least ... though they are a trend setter)
- a solid rise for Japanese capex intentions indications (machinery orders a big beat),
- BOj (Jan) minutes
- strong China data (which did impact on FX)
- and a US election!
More on all of these in the bullets above
To address the last one first - some US politics - we are still awaiting a final result and if it is as close as it appears there will perhaps be a delay for a recounting. As I update it appears the Dem candidate is in front, which will be the surprise result. But if the Rep guy does end up winning it's a pyrrhic victory indeed.
The China data showed solid beats for industrial production and investment, but a slight miss on retail sales (see bullets above for detail). AUD/USD found a bit of a spurt after the data and hit its session high around first noted resistance.
NZD/USD has had a better day by far, benefitting notably from buyers of the kiwi against AUD (and others of course). Note, there is big data coming from NZ Thursday morning (local NZ time, Wednesday evening GMT - see bullets .... err, .. below for more on this.
USD/JPY traded higher toward 106.70 and thereabouts in the Tokyo morning but has since given the small gain all back to more or less unchanged on the day.
EUR, CHF and GBP are all up against the USD. There was nothing in the way of specific news for any of these 3.
And, there is plenty ... Still to come:
