Forex news for Asia trading Friday 8 September 2017

A big move for the USD here in Asia today (well, a big move for this time zone anyway). The USD was weak overnight and that move extended here. The move was pretty much across the board with all majors up against the dollar, to varying degrees, of course.

If 'continuation' is not enough and you are looking for catalysts for the move beyond overnight developments (Hi, Dr. Draghi!) allow me to point a finger at remarks from New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley. He dialled back his hawkishness from 3 weeks ago, not repeating his expectation for a rate hike this year. I was more taken aback with his comment along the lines that he did not view asset valuations as particularly troublesome, though.

Whatever it was, NZD, AUD, CAD, EUR, CHF, GBP all moved higher strongly. Yen was a bit of a laggard, but USD/JPY did drop on the session.

EUR/USD leapt to its highest since January of 2015, and for the yuan, onshore (CNY) was a big gainer, to its highest since April of last year.

Apart from Federal Reserve speakers (Dudley and George - George managed to be her usual hawkish self, Duds and G remarks are in the in the bullets, above) we got some data:

  • Japanese GDP for Q2 was revised lower for its 'final' (the preliminary was a huge 4% y/y, taken down to 2.5% in today's revised result though);
  • Australian housing finance for July (investor lending continues to slide, as new regulations have intended, so they're working so far at least);
  • and Chinese trade balance for August (a smaller surplus).

See bullets above for details on these data points, and more.

Regional equities:

  • Nikkei -0.49%
  • Shanghai +0.24%
  • HK +0.54%
  • ASX -0.39%

Still to come: