Forex news for Asia trading on Friday 14 May 2021
- Japan will use 512 bn yen from the emergency budget reserve to secure vaccines
- Heads up for two big US Friday events: Fed's Kaplan speaking ("Lets talk taper" guy) & Retail sales
- China passenger and cargo flights - numbers surge in April
- Japan's Prime Minister Suga press conference coming up (1100GMT) - more coronavirus restrictions
- US Sec State Blinken said the US will not leave Australia alone to face China coercion
- Reuters median forecast has the Federal Reserve to begin taper early in 2022
- PBOC sets USD/ CNY reference rate for today at 6.4525 (vs. yesterday at 6.4612)
- Early PCE expectations from Goldman Sachs
- Japan to declare state of emergency in another 3 prefectures
- Japan M6.2 earthquake - near Fukushima
- ICYMI - Bank of England Gov Bailey also says there might be a case for digital currency
- ICYMI - latest US firms to offer worker pay rises - McDonalds, Amazon
- Elon Musk tweet on Doge developments - Potentially promising.
- ICYMI - Big hitter Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management is wading into crypto
- New Zealand manufacturing PMI for April 58.4 (prior 63.6)
- Japan set to introduce more stringent coronavirus restrictions in 5 more prefectures
- ICYMI - BoE Dep Gov Cunliffe sees good reasons for the Bank to issue its own digital currency
- Fighting continuing in Gaza - reports of troops, air
- Elon Musk ( Bitcoin trashing guy) is tweeting - High time for a carbon tax!
- Coinbase says it plans to list DOGEcoin in a few weeks time
- Fed's Bullard says its a judgement call on whether inflation is transitory
- UK government's 'COVID-19 passports' plan is being ‘scaled back’
- More from Fed's Bullard: monetary policy is in a good position, do not want to shift policy in a crisis.
- Trade ideas thread - Friday 14 May 2021
- US President Biden says to meet with Republicans again next week on infrastructure
- Fed's Bullard says US economy to grow beyond the pre-pandemic level of output by the end of June
Yen weakened a little during the session here today with USD/JPY as high as circa 109.65 before stabilising. The Japanese government announced it would be declaring a state of emergency in another 3 prefectures (see bullets above), which came as a surprise although some tightening of restrictions was expected. There was little other news from Japan, apart from a M6 earthquake offshore from Fukushima that was not accompanied by a tsunami alert, thankfully.
Other major FX rates were little net changed on the session with only minor scale ranges.
Crypto was once again in the spotlight, although the glare was not as harsh as Thursday. DOGE benefitted from news Coinbase will list the coin in the weeks ahead, and also from a tweet from Elon Musk saying developments on it look 'potentially promising' (see bullets above).
Noting also comments from Atlanta Fed President Bullard saying the Fed will make a judgement call on whether inflation is indeed transitory - this sounds like a bit of a concession from Bullard that the Fed's insistence up to now that inflation is transitory may be up for questioning.
China commodities fell today; steel, iron ore were both off heavily. Oil, too, lower on the session.
Regional equities took their cue from a green Wall Street on Thursday:
Japan's Nikkei +1.8%, Topix 1.6%
China's Shanghai Composite +0.9%
Hong Kong's Hang Seng +0.6%
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 +0.7%
