It was another subdued forex session in Asia today ahead of the speech from Federal Reserve Chair Powell coming on Friday at 10.05 am US Eastern time.

News and data flow was basically non-existent relevant to major FX rates.

USD/JPY had a minor swing, down in the Tokyo morning on approach to 114.60 and then back up to just over 145.00. Its not far from that high as I post. There was no fresh news nor data to drive the moves.

On the central bank we had a Bank of Korea policy decision, see bullets above but the short version is that the base rate benchmark was left unchanged at 3.5%, where its been all year.

The People’s Bank of China once again set the reference rate for USD/CNY in a supportive fashion for the yuan. There have been circa 10 big figure gaps between the modelled estimate and the setting from the PBOC all week. That continued today (just under 10 big figures).

Asian equity markets:

  • Japan’s Nikkei 225 +0.4%

  • China’s Shanghai Composite -0.1%

  • Hong Kong’s Hang Seng +1%

  • South Korea’s KOSPI +0.9%

  • Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 +0.4%

usdcnh during Thursday 24 August 2023 wrap chart

USD/CNH 5 minute candles