Forex trading headlines for Asia Friday 2 May 2014
- Japan PM Abe: Says corporate wage increases have been encouraging
- Nikkei: Japan considers corporate tax cuts from fiscal 2015
- Moody’s says Scotland will suffer a double downgrade of its credit rating if it votes for independence
- Japan – Jobless Rate for March: 3.6% (expected 3.6%)
- Japan – Overall Household Spending for March: 7.2% y/y (expected 2.0%)
- Japan April monetary base: +48.5% y/y (prior +54.8% y/y)
- Japan Buying Foreign Bonds, Y 70.8B (plus, the rest of this data)
- New Zealand – ANZ Commodity Price Index for April: -4.0% (prior was -0.1%)
- Australia – Housing Industry Association (HIA) New Home Sales for March: +0.2% m/m
- Australia – Q1 2014 PPI: +0.9% q/q (expected +0.6%)
- Reports on gunfire in Slaviansk in eastern Ukraine
It was an unsurprisingly quiet session in Asia ahead of the nonfarm payroll report due Friday morning (US time). This combined with ‘golden week’ in Japan (though markets were open today), some traders taking long weekend after thursday’s holiday in Singapore and Hong Kong, and China closed again today. Movements across the board were minimal.
The Kiwi chopped within 0.8610/0.8635, the AUD from 0.9260 to 0.9275.
EUR/USD did drift ever so slightly lower, losing about 12 points on the session. USD/CHF and cable put in a similar sort of lacklustre performance.
Even USD/JPY and yen crosses were subdued, with barely a 15-point range for the USD/JPY.
Late in the session saw reports of some military activity in Ukraine (see bullets, above).
