Forex news for Asia trading Monday 21 January 2019

I hadn't mentioned the football all day, that headline is the summary though!

OK, back to business:

Weekend news was not of much impact in the early hours here as Asia got the week underway. Minor FX wiggles only on shutdown and Brexit developments.

While we awaited the main event, the 'activity' data for December from China and of course Q4 GDP also we got a report that US Treasury had informed some members of Congress that the trade talks were not coming along to well, with intellectual property issues a sticking point. IP issues are going to be a thorny issue indeed, maybe the central point of the whole dispute. Sort of like the border issue in Ireland for Brexit - its nigh on intractable.

As the US Treasury comments crossed the wires risk indicators fell just a little, AUD, NZD, ES all dropped. Like I said, 'a little' and the drop did not extend (I'll come back to this ...it did for the kiwi later).

And so to the data from China. GDP (you'll never guess) managed to hit target for 2018 (a little above). Activity data was pretty much in line also. The headlines were supportive for a few minutes but questions on the data were soon raised. Not just their veracity. GDP, for example, showed its 3rd consecutive quarterly fall and the Q4 headling of 6.4% is the lowest since the global financial crisis back in 2008. For the full 2018 year the 6.6% results is the lowest in 28 years. Of course, responses covered the likely hood of more stimulus. Rates soon settled back into a slumber.

Except for NZD, which has fallen to new session lows as I update. Later this week (Wednesday) we get one of the quarterly official CPI releases. For today, though there was nothing specific I could find on the kiwi apart from the usual concerns weighing on it.

AUD, EUR, CAD, GBP, CHF are all little net changed on the session here against the USD. USD/JPY traded to circa 109.50 mid-Tokyo morning and is around 109.60 as I post.

Still to come: