The weakness on Wall Street that continued on Wednesday weighed on regional equities here today. Despite the rate cuts from the People’s Bank of China earlier this week Chinese equities fell. The People’s Bank of China are keen to avoid further losses for stocks. The Bank announced another rate cut today. The Bank left the Medium-term Lending Facility (MLF) rate unchanged last week at 2.5%, but in a double surprise move they cut the rate today.

  • Surprise 1 was an MLF today, the PBOC have been doing these regularly on the 1th of each month. Today the Bank injected 200bn yuan for one year at a reduced rate of 2.3%.
  • The second surprise was the 20bp cut, after only 10bp cuts to the repo and LPRs on Monday.

Several major Chinese commercial banks, such as the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), Agricultural Bank of China (AgBank), Bank of Canada (BOC), and others, announced 10 - 20 bps deposit rate cuts.

Otherwise news and data flow was fairly light.

That didn’t stop significant (for Asia) FX moves. AUD, NZD and CAD were notable losers. GBP fell also but EUR has mainly tracked sideways. Gold fell under USD2370. BTC/USD is

USD/JPY was slammed 150 points lower again. As I write its under 152.50. The carry trade continues to be wound back, with deleveraging triggered by this strengthening yen.

We got higher (wholesale) inflation data from Japan today. Service prices among businesses rose the most in over three decades, If this translates to consumer level inflation its another reason the BoJ has to tighten. The pass through won't be evident immediately of course. The BoJ meet next week

usdyen wrap chart 25 July 2024 2