Forex and Bitcoin news for Asia trading Friday 9 February 2018

Or maybe not. OK, a bit. Another slide in the US on Thursday provided a clue for traders in Asia today, with lower openings (natch) and then continued losses. I posted earlier on the ongoling rout if you'd like an idea of 'how much' ... but by the time you read this there will likely be more blood on the floor (but Justin has just posted this:Asian equities may be battered but the currency market is having none of it)

News and data flow was brisk today.

A surprise (sort of) was the US government heading for another shutdown. The continuing funding was thought to be a done deal but fiscal hawk Rand Paul chucked a spanner in the works. Funding dries up at midnight (Washington time) and the next vote is not expected until around 3am.

We got soft housing finance data from Australia today. It was somewhat overshadowed by the quarterly RBA Statement on Monetary Policy though. Governor Lowe had given a clue to the tone of the Statement in his speech overnight and thus there was little to surprise in it. More on both of these in the bullets above.
China inflation data was in line with expectations.

Federal Reserve Kansas Pres Esther George spoke today, nothing surprising from here - she is in favour of more rate hike from the Fed, maybe even at a faster pace (see bullets above).

USD/JPY has traded higher on the session after bottoming in early Tokyo under 108.60. Its testing back at 109 as I update. There was little of market moving substance out of Japan today. USD/CHF has also ticked higher, also not too large a move.

EUR, AUD, GBP, CAD, NZD ... all very little changed against the USD as I update after not large session ranges. AUD/USD tried towards 0.7900 a couple of times today but hasn't managed to trade there.

The PBOC devalued the onshore yuan at the reference rate setting today, the biggest slash to its value since January of last year (nearly a 400 point devaluation)

Still to come - a big Canadian economic data report due today,

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