Forex news for Asia trading Wednesday 3 June 2015
Australian GDP today:
- Westpac on Austn GDP: Domestic demand stalled, incomes remained under intense pressure
- Australian Treasurer Hockey: AUD still at relatively elevated level
- Responses to the Australian GDP data beat
- Australia - Q1 GDP: +0.9% q/q (vs. +0.7% expected)
- China HSBC May Services PMI: 53.5 (prior 52.9) & Composite: 51.2 (prior 51.3)
- Japan Markit/JMMA May Services PMI: 51.5 (prior 51.3) & Composite: 51.6 (prior 50.7)
- BOJ's Shirai: Japan CPI to approach 2% at end of fiscal 2016
- New Zealand ANZ Commodity Price Index for May: -4.7% m/m (prior -7.4%)
- BHP Billiton warns global commodity supply glut to persist
- Westpac lowers forecast for 2015/16 Fonterra payout to NZ$5.40/kg
- More from Goldman Sachs' Chief Economist call for September Fed rate hike
- IMF: "A radical solution for high debt is to do nothing at all"
- Australia - AiG services PMI for May: 49.6 (prior was 49.7)
- RBNZ estimates new mortgage rules will reduce Auckland house prices by 2 - 4%
- Economic Info Daily: China industrial output for 2015 may rise by about 7%
- UK - BRC Shop Price Index for May: -1.9% y/y (-1.8% expected)
- Ex-Fed Blinder Nikkei interview - more
- Goldman Sachs Hatzius - expects Fed to hike in September, even though good reasons to wait
- Nikkei reports - Blinder sees a 50/50 chance of Fed rate hike in September
- Greek PM Tsipras and EU's Juncker to meet on Wednesday night in Brussels
Oil
- Reuters report: Senior Gulf OPEC delegate says consensus on maintaining oil output ceiling
- API: crude oil inventories: +1.8mln bbls
A few wiggles in the currencies today, but the AUD was a star performer, gaining more after its surge yesterday and overnight.
The headline on the Q1 GDP was +0.9% q/q and +2.3% y/y, far better than the +0.7% and +2.1% consensus median expectations. The market response was to immediately mark the currency higher, to 0.7810 before a further gain toward 0.7820. It wasn't long, though, until AUD/USD slipped back below the figure as details of the data were digested.
NZD/USD jumped along with the AUD after drifting lower beforehand. Its high was limited to what it managed in the overnight, its mid-range as I update.
EUR, CHF, GBP all had small ranges, and are all barely changed from late NY levels.
USD/JPY, too, did not have a large range, as high as 124.25 (or thereabouts) in the Tokyo morning before a dip under 124 (123.85 bids holding) and back up above the figure as I update.
Oil dropped on the API data release late in the US afternoon and didn't recover to any significant degree at all. But, not a big range for it. Gold edged higher initially before slipping a little lower than its late US level.
Still to come!
