Forex news for Asia-Pacific trading on November 4, 2019:
- Australia September retail sales +0.2% vs +0.4% expected
- Trump invites southeast Asian leaders to US for special summit
- New Zealand said to agreed to upgraded free-trade agreement with China
- PBOC sets yuan mid-point at 7.0382 vs 7.0372 prior
- Australia October ANZ job ads -1.0% vs +0.3% prior
- Australia October Melbourne Institute inflation +1.5% vs +1.5% y/y prior
- UK Lloyd's business barometer +6 vs +2 prior
- Westpac will raise $2 billion by selling shares, cuts dividend
Markets:
- Gold down $2.50 to $1511
- WTI crude down 33-cents to $55.87
- Shanghai Composite +0.75%
- NZD leads, CHF lags
Japan was closed for a holiday to start the week but aside from sapping USD/JPY, it wasn't as dead as anticipated.
A big part of that was the continuing fallout from the trade war along with the ASEAN summit on the weekend. The news was generally positive on both fronts as Commerce Sec Wilbur Ross beat the dead horse on the Phase One deal again on the weekend but also talked about no European auto tariffs. Within Asia, China was talking nice with Australia and agreed on a new free trade agreement with New Zealand.
It all added up to a nice start to the week for AUD and NZD. The Aussie briefly lost all its gains on a soft retail sales report but the market is choosing to look forward to 2020 rather than a soft third quarter. The RBA will have more to say in tomorrow's decision.
Best of luck this week.