The forex trading headlines for Asia trading today
- Nikkei reported that the BOJ is to to raise its CPI forecast and may set spring 2015 goal for 2% inflation target
- The big capital outflows expected from Japan have still not materialized, with data for the week ended April 12 showing:
- Japan Buying Foreign Bonds – ¥331.9bn (vs. prior of – ¥1139.7bn) and Japan Buying Foreign Stocks – ¥157.7bn (vs. prior of + ¥6.6bn) (5th straight week of negative for these two measures, against expectations Japanese investors would send money offshore in response to BOJ easing)
- While Foreign Buying Japan Bonds – ¥175.8bn (vs. prior of + ¥463.6bn)
- and Foreign Buying Japan Stocks + ¥1569.0bn (vs. prior of ¥868.6bn)
- Japan Merchandise Trade Balance for March -Y362.4bn (vs. expected at -Y522.2bn)
- Japan March adjusted merchandise trade balance -Y922.0bn (vs. -Y934.5bn expected)
- Japan March Merchandise trade exports +1.1% y/y (vs. +0.2% expected)
- Japan March Merchandise trade imports +5.5% y/y (vs. expected at +6.3%)
- BOJ member Miyao gave a speech today in which he said he expects investors to buy more foreign bonds – more comments here, and here
- Bloomberg obtained a draft of the G20 communique, which affirmed the G20 commitment to avoid competitive devaluations/depreciations and said the global outlook is uneven and somewhat weaker
- Tightening policies in China have not been particularly effective at restraining prices, as Chinese March new home prices rose in 68 of 70 cities m/m (vs. 66 in February)
- China March FDI +5.7% y/y (vs. +1.9% expected)
- Australia: Q1 NAB business confidence +2 (vs. -5 for last quarter)
- New Zealand: April ANZ consumer confidence index +3.8% to 119.2 (vs.last month -5.1% at 114.8)
- New Zealand: March ANZ job ads +0.7% m/m (vs. +1.8% prior)
- Brazil raised its benchmark lending rate to 7.5% (from 7.25%), as broadly expected
- North Korea laid out its ‘demands’ – top of the list is it wants the UN to withdraw sanctions (no surprise there, but at least they’ve started talking)
Let’s get EUR/USD and GBP/USd out of the way. these two had a quiet session , but both found support as the day wore on. The activity, though, was elsewhere today.
USD/JPY traded higher in late New York, the headlines reported from Nikkei helping it along 9see bullets, above). The fund flow data out of Japan, which for the fifth consecutive week showed Japanese investors not net sending money offshore, as has been widely anticipated, saw USD/JPY slip to the day’s lows. Moves were not dramatic, though, with bids ahead of 97.50 holding it before it traded back towards 98.30 in early Tokyo afternoon.
AUD and NZD had quiet mornings, but lost ground as gold and metals gold sold off heavily. Again, not dramatic moves in the currencies, though, both AUD and NZD made new lows compared with the New York session, but both failed to carry through, each ticking back to the day’s earlier highs as I write.
