It was an active day for data flow here in Asia, which didn’t translate into too much FX rate movement. Holidays continued in some local centres with Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia all out. Holidays will persist too into Europe and the UK but US markets are back; stocks, bonds, and FX open. Globex is already open for Sunday evening in the US as normal. As a heads up, ICYMI, much of Europe and the UK switched onto daylight saving over the weekend.

From Japan today we had the Q1 Bank of Japan Tankan report. It painted a picture of a rather subdued economy. The inflation expectations part of the survey showed firms still expecting above target (the BOJ 2% target) inflation. We also had verbal intervention comments from Japanese finance minister Suzuki and also from Prime Minister Kishida. USD/JPY has traded in a small range only during the session.

Over the weekend were official PMIs for March from China. Manufacturing and non-manufacturing improved and both are now in expansion. The improvement for manufacturing was impressive, rising 1.7 points from February. On Monday came the Caixin/S&P Global Manufacturing PMI which improved marginally and remained in expansion.

Across major FX the early move, upon the opening of Globex and higher US equity index futures, was for a weaker USD. This has since more or less unwound and there is not a lot of net change to report on the day.

Gold the performer on the day:

gold wrap chart 01 April 2024 2