Forex news for Asia trading on Thursday 17 June 2021
- Academic article - Asymmetric information in the foreign exchange market
- China May new home prices +0.6% m/m
- AUD/USD up, but has come back a little, on the blow-out Australian jobs report
- Australian May Employment Change +115.2K (expected +30K) & Unemployment Rate: 5.1% (expected 5.5%)
- Australian fund manager sees start of Fed taper in late 2021 or early 2022
- PBOC sets USD/ CNY reference rate for today at 6.4298 (vs. yesterday at 6.4078)
- More from RBA's Lowe, says border closure could put upward pressure on wages
- Merrill Lynch sticks to its forecast for Fed taper to begin early in 2022
- Singapore May NODX -0.1% m/m (vs. +4.7% expected)
- ANZ now forecasting a Reserve Bank of New Zealand cash rate hike in February 2022
- RBA Gov Lowe: Premature to be considering ending bond buying
- Hong Kong police have arrested 5 media executives
- BoC Gov Macklem says taking the recent strength of the CAD into account
- New Zealand will allow travellers from Victoria (Australia) quarantine-free from June 23
- JP Morgan says they continue to expect Fed interest rate hike lift-off in 2023, taper in early 2022
- Japan data - Reuters Tankan, June manufacturing index 22 (prior 21)
- More from BoC Gov. Macklem: Recent higher inflation reflects base-year effects
- New Zealand GDP for Q1 2021 (sa) 1.6% q/q (expected +0.5%)
- BoC Gov Macklem says economic recovery is make good progress
- Goldman Sachs says more hawkish Fed expectations a 'headwind' for short USD
- Brazil's central bank hikes rates by 75bp, indicates it may do so again next meeting
- UK Trade Sec Truss trade talks with New Zealand Thursday (London time)
- ICYMI - Saudi oil minister says there is a risk of an oil price supercycle due to lack of investing
- Trade ideas thread - Thursday 17 June 2021
- ICYMI - US Treasury Sec Yellen says US may decouple from China to some extent
- Stocks close lower on FOMC decision but off the lows
Major FX digested the FOMC outcome here in Asia in a relatively sedate manner. AUD and NZD were different, though.
New Zealand kicked off the data agenda with a huge beat for Q1 GDP. This was followed up by at least one set of bank analysts (ANZ in NZ) bringing forward their expectation for the first Reserve Bank of New Zealand rate hike, to February 2022 (from August 2022). NZD/USD rose 60 or so points from its post-FOMC low to test 0.7100.
Later we had a huge beat on the Australian jobs report for May; unemployment dropped from 5.5% in April to 5.1%, jobs added grew by more than 100K and the participation rate rose. One bank's analysts (JPM) said it was "a near-flawless labour report". The Australian dollar popped above 0.7640 briefly.
Both NZD/USD and AUD/USD have subsequently given back some of their gains, both are still higher on the session.
Gold was a mover also, losing further ground on expectations post-FOMC of a nearer-term Fed dialling back of monetary support (various analysts see tapering most likely beginning early 2022 and some have rate hike expectations now in 2023).
On the central bank front we had Brazil hike its key rate, as expected. We also had speeches/Q&A from Governors of the Bank of Canada (Macklem) and Reserve Bank of Australia (Lowe). Neither of these two Govs had too much FX impact.
Bitcoin traded in a small range (for it).
NZD/USD:
