Forex and Bitcoin news for Asia trading Monday 9 April 2018
North Korea denuke, Syria strikes, China trade ... yep plenty of news about on the session today and over the weekend and forex pretty much yawned.
The session here in Asia kicked off in early (very pre-Tokyo) trade with an announcment from US officials that North Korea is NK prepared to discuss denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula:
- US officials say North Korea prepared to discus denuclearisation
- More detail on North Korea prepared to discus denuclearisation story
This gave USD/JPY a tiny boost, up towards 107 (+15/20 points).
Despite the early news USD/JPY soon settled around an unchanged level for much of the session here
We then got some NAFTA news:
which saw USD/CAD up 20-some points (price chart is here I posted as it happened earlier Monday).
The news flow didn't let up, next it was reports from Syria of strikes on air bases in the country:
- All sorts of unconfirmed reports of fighter aircraft movement towards Syria
- Further reports of attacks on Syrian air force infrastructure
If you check out those posts you'll see what started as unconfirmed reports became confirmed (by Syrian media at least) but uncertainty as to who was responsible - the White House and Pentagon both denied it was US strikes:
Speculation it was France or Israel has mounted.
FX on the day though, despite all this news, stayed in limited ranges. AUD and NZD both gained against the USD, but some AUD/NZD offers saw AUD underperform against the cross-ditch currency.
EUR has slid a little, as has the CHF and GBP - but movement is very small and we await Europe/UK and the US trade for directional indications.
Gold too, little change
Other headlines for the session:
- CASS researcher says unlikely that China will dump US treasuries
- China (official) press - US suffering an anxiety disorder with protectionist trade threats
- More from the PBOC adviser: China should invest less in US debt
- PBOC sets USD/ CNY reference rate for today at 6.3114
- More on the EUR zone recession piece in the UK press
- Japan BoP current account balance for February: ¥ 2076.0bn (expected ¥ 2196.0bn)
- Weekend - Fed's Kashkari says Fed watching U.S.-China spat
- Australia data - construction PMI for March higher to 57.2 (56.0 was the Feb result)
- AUD getting positive local press: "record haul from energy and minerals" exports this year
- Citi on risky Fed hikes, Barclays doesn't like EUR/USD - a few bank notes over the weekend
- Trade ideas thread - Monday 9 April 2018
- George Soros called cryptocurrencies a bubble in January, but now planning to trade them
And, these from the weekend:
- 5 things to watch for in the week ahead
- White House eases up on the trade war rhetoric on the weekend
- Xi Jinping's speech on Tuesday may be the surprise highlight of the week
- Bitcoin climbs back to $7000
- Brazil's Lula turns himself in to face jail term
- More from Evans: A little surprised wages haven't responded more
