Forex and Bitcoin news for Asia trading Wednesday 16 May 2018

News and data:

Japanese Q1 GDP and Australian Q1 Wage Index the data focus for Asia FX today. Both were a wee bit sad.

Japanese economic growth slipped into contraction in the first quarter, with Q4 2017 revised lower also. The details are in the bullets above, but in a nutshell a very poor performance indeed. If there are any brighter spots - the deflator (an inflation measure) moved a little higher and analysts do expect Q1 to make a low point in GDP and for an improvement from here.

In Australia we got another weak reading for wage growth, the q/q missing expectations. Ming and retail continue to disappoint while public sector wages (eg. health sector a relatively strong performer) better. If there is a bright spot its that bonus payments were higher.

The yen did little on the Japan data, USD/JPY has lost a few tics on the session only (North korean headlines given a few points to the yen)

The Australian dollar retested its overnight low circa 0.7450 and bounced back to around 0.7470-odd. There is another bid data point to come in Australia again tomorrow (jobs report for April).

NZD/USD pierced its overnight low but there was little foillow thorugh and it too has bounced20+ points.

Elsewhere, currencies traded subdued ranges.

Still to come:

Bank research: