Forex news for Asia trading Thursday 9 April 2015

  • China sets 7% growth target: Implications for Australia and commodities
  • Hong Kong stocks skyrocketing again
  • SGD - UBS sees no change in MAS policy this month, easing later in 2015
  • More on the 'What is the rate path after initial lift off" question ... this time BoA/ML
  • Once the Fed does 'lift off', what will they do after? Here's one bank's view of timings
  • FX big wigs say HFT is good ... and bad
  • More from NZ PM Key: Any decisions on intervention are for the RBNZ
  • Japan Buying Foreign Bonds, Y -3073.5B (plus, the rest of this data)
  • New Zealand PM Key: Says NZD likely to decline further against the US dollar
  • Australia - AiG construction PMI index for March: 50.1 (prior was 43.9)
  • Moody's: Risk of UK exit from EU stronger credit driver than over election uncertainty
  • UK election latest poll (and how the race has evolved so far)
  • New Zealand - ANZ Truckometer for March: -0.4% m/m( prior was -1.3%)
  • Oil ... I think I've found a buyer! Australia to spend several billion.
  • A end of day snapshot of the major stock markets for April 8, 2015
  • FT: "Greece has ... sufficient funds to repay international creditors this month"
  • ECB QE started. Fed tightening sometime later. What do we do now?
  • Janet Yellen is trading EUR/USD. Here are her orders for today.
  • Alcoa Q1 adj. EPS 28c vs. 26c estimates - CEO sees world economy in 'decent shape'

EUR/USD was relatively sedate during the session, losing about 20 pips and then more or less rebounding the whole lot. No news of note for the big pair.

Cable was barely a little more active, dropping around 30 points and recovering nearly the whole amount also. There could be a big session for it coming up in the UK.

Both USD/CHF and USD/jpy were a little more directional, both up a little on the day and stabilising not too far from the highs (as of writing).

AUD/USD had a decent round-trip, initially dropping 30 or so points to find buyers ahead of 0.7655 and then tracking up to just above 0.7700, where it sits just below as I update. NZD followed a similar sort of pattern, but the points range was not so great. NZ PM Key tried his hand with a bit of jawboning, to little net effect on the day.

Oil was falt and sideways, gold a fraction weaker.

HK stocks had a very wild ride, the Hang Seng covering thousands of points and hitting highs last seen in early 2008.