Forex news for Asia trading Wednesday 30 November 2016

  • USD/JPY at session highs
  • Vegan alert - don't eat the new Bank of England 5 quid note
  • Chinese state banks selling USD/CNY for the 3rd day in a row
  • Oil producer meeting today - Iran, Iraq resisting pressure to cut production
  • ANZ CEO sees emerging signs of stress in Australian economy
  • China Data - Westpac MNI Consumer Sentiment (Nov.): 114.9 (prior 117.1 in October)
  • More on Australian building approvals data: "unambiguously weak"
  • PBOC sets USD/CNY central rate at 6.8865 (vs. yesterday at 6.8889)
  • RBNZ's Wheeler: Expects the December CPI to be back in target band
  • Australian Building Approvals for October: -12.6% m/m ( expected +2.0%, prior -8.7%)
  • John Taylor says it makes sense for the Fed to hike in December
  • UK data: GfK Consumer sentiment: -8 (expected -4, prior -3)
  • NZ - ANZ Nov. Activity Outlook 37.6 (prior 38.4) &Business Confidence 20.5 (prior 24.5)
  • NZ finmin English: Biggest risks to the economy lie offshore
  • Japan Industrial Production (preliminary for October): +0.1% m/m (expected 0.0%)
  • Trade ideas thread - Wednesday 30 November 2016
  • My favourite (updated) ad is back! "AUD to crash in 2017!"
  • US election - Wisconsin recount. I've a MUCH better idea.
  • Australian Treasurer 'reviewing' tax to raise more revenue
  • Its (almost) official! NYT says Mnuchin Trump’s expected choice for Treasury Secretary
  • OIL - Canada PM Trudeau authorizes CAD6.8bn Trans Mountain pipeline expansion
  • How much will oil fall if OPEC talks break down?
  • RBNZ's Wheeler: Seeing an 'encouraging drop' in new mortgage lending
  • OIL - OPEC - Algeria proposal is said to seek a cut to 32.5mln barrels per day
  • OIL - muted price response to the private inventory data, headline draw
  • NZ M3 money supply +7.1% y/y for October (prior +4.8%)

A swing for the USD in Asia today, early weakness being replaced by a better performance as the session progressed. USD/JPY was where the moves were most marked.

USD/JPY dropped nearly 50 points quite quickly in the Tokyo morning. Preliminary industrial production data for October was a beat, but the influence of the data was only minimal, it was early flows out of USD driving the drop. It didn't last, though, with a rapid retrace, followed by some lazy consolidation and then a jump. First to 112.80 and then an hour or so later through to a high just short of 113.00. Short covering and end-of-month flows cited as the driver. (Just as a note, & a general observation, take these reasons cited with a grain of salt, there was not a clear catalyst, or catalysts, today).

AUD/USD popped toward 0.7500 prior to building permit data today, but found sellers once again ahead of the figure. Thoughts of a pop above were put on hold after terrible permits data (a huge miss) and a subsequent dribble lower for the AUD/USD.

NZD was a better performer than the AUD, with multiple comments out of NZ (see bullets above) following the earlier stability report(see America's session for details of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand report).

EUR/USD & USD/CHF followed a similar pattern - weaker USD early followed by a bounce back to a new session extreme for the USD against both.

Cable was lower early and is now little changed on the session. Overall a weakish performance for GBP. M'eh ... actually not much in it today - flattish performance.

CNY continued higher today, with USD/CNY below 6.9 today. The PBOC strengthened the mid rate for the 3rd consecutive day today. Chinese state banks were reported USD/CNY sellers today.

Commodities were on the nose again in China today, iron ore, rebar, and coking coal, were all limit-down. I'm tempted to chill, they'll probably be limit up in a day or so (shout-out to the doomers, don't have a cow).