It was a subdued day across major forex rates ahead of a week that features speaking engagements by:

  • Federal Reserve Chair Powell
  • European Central Bank President Lagarde
  • Bank of England Governor Bailey
  • and Bank of Japan Governor Ueda

Nevertheless, we did get some items of interest including:

  • Saudi Arabia and Russia will extend their continue voluntary 1 million bpd output reductions into December – as widely expected
  • The Melbourne Institute headline monthly inflation gauge fell by 0.1% in October, the first month of falling prices in 14 months. While this data point is rarely highlighted by the RBA its not a smoking gun for a rate hike at tomorrow’s policy meeting (a +25bp rate hike is widely expected by analysts but not so much by market pricing)
  • Japan's services activity (the Jibun Bank / S&P Global PMI) expanded at its slowest pace sor far this year in October. Its still in expansion, at 51.6 (from September’s 53.8) so the panic button has not yet been hit. The service sector has been the key driver of growth in Japan.
  • Bank of Japan Governor Ueda once again said that the BOJ will keep YCC, negative short-term rates intact until sustained achievement of 2% inflation is foreseen by the Bank
  • USD/CNH hit its lowest in 3 weeks
  • The US military confirmed that an Ohio-class submarine arrived in the Middle East. The location of these subs is never made public, doing so this time is clearly aimed at dissuading Iran from escalating its atrocities-by-proxy against Israel.
usdyen wrap chart 06 November 2023