Forex news for Asia trading Friday 21 August 2015

  • New Zealand July Credit Card Spending +1.7% m/m (prior +0.3%)
  • Quick take on the China manufacturing PMI: ABN Amro ... "More monetary stimulus expected"
  • China August Flash Caixin manufacturing PMI: 47.1 (48.2 expected)
  • Nikkei Japan Manufacturing PMI for August (flash): 51.9 (prior 51.2)
  • People's Bank of China (PBOC) sets yuan reference rate at 6.3864
  • Top-ranked precious metals forecaster says holding bearish view for gold
  • Japan economy minister Amari: Japanese stock selloff started in China
  • You can now follow the "North Korea crisis: live"
  • RBNZ responds to submissions on LVR rule changes
  • Did the Ashley Madison hack and leak trigger the US stock market slide?
  • New Zealand migration data for July: +5740 permanent immigration in July
  • Here's the new Greek PM ... add this to your spell checker
  • Xinhua reports North Korean leader orders army into state of war
  • 'Nazi gold train found in Polish mountains' could be boobytrapped
  • Did stocks sell off because of QE? DB says yes they did (not what you think)

See the headline? There ya go. Wrap done!

Overnight stock market weakness extended into Asia today and was given fresh impetus by a renewed indication of Chinese economic weakness.

The China August Flash Caixin manufacturing PMI (formerly known as the HSBC Manufacturing PMI) came in well below expectations, and at a 77 month low! A dreadful result. About the only positive that can be said is that it likely indicates more Chinese stimulus is in the pipeline. There's some lipstick on a pig for you. Did I mention the Caixing PMI was formerly the HSBC PMI? Talk about a good sell!

AUD/USD was being sold heavily leading into the PMI data print (leak? ... you may very well think that ...) and took another leg lower on the release, hitting just under 0.7290 before recovering just a little to above 0.7300 where it is as I update.

EUR & gold continued their gains in Asia today.

Yen carried on higher also, helped along by an escalation in tension on the Korean peninsula. North Korean leader Kim 'pass the French fries' Jung-Un was reported to have ordered the army into a heightened state of war readiness. In South Korea the local KOSPI index lost around 3% and the won is lower by about 0.5% against the USD.

Oil gained early in the Asian session, but has given it all back to be close to overnight lows as I update.

CHF managed a gain, while Cable was all 'Not bothered', more or less flat.

Asian equity markets are, as you'd suspect by now, soft on the session as I update:

  • Shanghai Composite down 2%
  • Shenzhen Composite down 3%
  • ASX/S&P 200 down nearly 2%
  • Japan's Nikkei 225 down just more than 2%
  • In HK, the Hang Seng Index down 2.2%

If we had a person of the week, it'd go to Stan 'The Man' Druckenmiller this week:

  • Stanley Druckenmiller bought a big new stake in gold ETF ... and that its his largest single holding