- For the second day in a row we have had ultra quiet trading conditions here in Asia, with the Chinese holidays probably to blame
- UK consumer confidence falls sharply
- Australian unit dwelling starts +4.3%
- Rio Tinto: mining tax has destabilised investment framework
- Japanese wages and employment data shows further slight improvement
- Russia considering adding CAD and AUD to reserves
- BP, White House escrow agreement stalling on important details
- Nikkei rises by 2%
It has been another very quiet session in Asia with the majors hardly moving at all and its probably bst to ignore whatever little happened in Asia and go back to the NY session for market pointers.
The EUR has continued to rally despite some more quite negative developments yesterday, a sure sign of a market that is short and is too busy short-covering to worry about small things like fundamentals. EUR/USD has had a paltry 1.2309/26 range in Asia.
The AUD has been similarly uninteresting in an .8630/54 range. The Rio Tinto statements and the poorer-than-expected unit dwelling starts have had no effect.
Cable also ignored the sharp drop in consumer confidence. Ranges: cable 1.4790/1.4817; EUR/GBP .8315/28
USD/JPY has tried to move both ways today, first up and then down but interest has been so totally lacking that traders finally gave up. Range: 91.44/67
Markets: Nikkei +2%, Sydney +1.2%, Seoul +0.9%. Gold $1234/oz, oil $77/bbl.
