Forex news for Asia trading Tuesday 14 April 2015
- RBC likes USD/JPY long here
- Abe adviser Hamada recrossing the wires - yen at 105 would be appropriate
- The Federal Reserve's FOMC meeting April 28 and 29 - don't ignore it ... risk re lift-off
- Australia - NAB March Business Confidence 3 (vs. prior 0)
- Preview of the ECB meeting this week .... too soon for QE tapering
- Several Iron Ore Producers Placed On CreditWatch Negative
- BoA/ML: US data to bounce back... Retail Sales for March... weather improved significantly
- EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/CAD - the next levels - Goldman Sachs
- Singapore dollar - Monetary Authority of Singapore decision - no change
- China press: China may invest 2.8tln yuan in railway 2016-2020
- Australia - ANZ Roy Morgan weekly Consumer Confidence: 109.9 (vs. prior 109.7)
- UK election - Conservatives campaign launch (hold the hot dogs)
- UK data - BRC March retail like-for-like sales: +3.2% y/y (vs. expected 0.5%)
- Negative rates... "some banks facing the paradox of actually owing interest to borrowers"
- China stockmarket - Shenzen exchange to be opened further to foreign investment
- New Zealand - Q1 business confidence +23% (vs. +23% prior)
- Nikkei: "Bank of Japan watches for impact of strong dollar"F
- Biggest Australian state could have its credit rating downgraded 'within weeks'
- Bloomberg: "Prudential Chief Says Biggest Worry Is Liquidity, Echoing Dimon"
- FT: Fed official warns 'flash crash' could be repeated
The NZD and AUD were both decent movers on the day against the USD. There wasn't much in the way of obvious catalysts out of New Zealand, though we did get good business confidence data (for Q1) from there in the morning via the NZIER survey (see bullets, above). The Australian dollar, though, did appear to benefit from some better business confidence data. Its not enough to hang your hat on if you'd like evidence of a solid improvement in the economy, at its best a 'green shoot' (to borrow a phrase). And only one, at that. Still, it is enough for the NAB (who conducted the business survey) to say that market expectations for two more rate cuts this year are off the mark, they are looking for just one more now. Again, see bullets, above.
EUR, CHF, GBP were all relatively sedate.
USD/JPY drifted 50 or so points lower, helped along a little by comments from Abe adviser Hamada saying he thought USD/JPY at 105 would be appropriate. I was going to say stop me if you've heard that before ... but you have ... those comments came out overnight (Adam with the story, here) and were merely a repeat over the Bloomberg terminal in Asia time today. Nevertheless, they cut a few points out of USD/JPY here the second time around.