Forex trading headlines for Asia Friday 28 February 2014
- Fed’s Lockhart: US. will be in low interest rate environment for “quite a while” and Fed’s Lockhart still at it: Sees ‘high bar’ to changing taper plan
- New Zealand January Building Consents (Building Permits): -8.3% m/m (vs. expected is -3.5%)
- Japan Markit/JMMA Manufacturing PMI for February: 55.5 (vs. prior was 56.6)
- All the Japan CPI data here: Japan National CPI for January: 1.4% (vs. 1.3% expected)
- Also, Household spending, unemployment rate and Job-To-Applicant Ratio data
- And Japan – Industrial Production January (preliminary reading): 4.0% m/m (expected 2.8%) + retail sales
- New Zealand – ANZ Business confidence for February: 70.8 (prior was 64.1)
- BoE’s Dale: MPC may diverge on policy as economy recovers
- UK data – GfK Consumer Confidence for February: -7 (expected was -7)
- Australia – Private Sector Credit January: +0.4% m/m (vs. expected 0.5%)
- People’s Bank of China (PBOC) sets yuan reference rate at 6.1214 but that was just the beginning of a might yuan slide today, more and more again and more still
- New Zealand – Money supply M3 for January: 7.0% y/y (prior was 5.8% y/y)
- NOTE: China manufacturing PMI to be released over the weekend
Japan – January vehicle production: 14.5% y/y (prior was 12.2%)
The most talked about mover of the day was once again the Chinese yuan, for its ninth successive day of decline, almost to its limit (see bullets, above).
USD/JPY took a tumble from early highs, with the data released today coming in on or better than expectations, which reduced the perceptions in the market (again) that the BOJ might be close to further easing actions. USD/JPY came off to overnight lows, also helped by declines in the yuan (again, see bullets, above)).
NZD/USD shot higher in the aftermath of strong business confidence data (really strong … really, really strong), putting on 50+ points before it fell away a little as the yuan weakened.
AUD/USD tried to copy its trans-Tasman counterpart, popping a few stops above overnight highs and running into sellers ahead of 0.8990/00 and drifting back. it hit new session lows as the yuan weakened.
GBP was pretty flat, it had a very slight tick lower as the yuan fell. EUR/USD ground a little lower, too, but not much in it … same for USD/CHF, not much movement at all. USD/CAD had a 10-odd point range around 1.1120
