Forex news for Asia trading Tuesday 13 December 2016
- China IP & retail sales data - recaps
- China's NBS: Yuan able to remain stable on sound economic fundamentals
- JP Morgan expect another RBA rate cut, cite today's business conditions fall
- China Nov. Industrial production 6.2%y/y (expected 6.1%) & Retail sales 10.8%y/y (expected 10.2%)
- Moody's: 2017 outlook for APAC banks negative: asset quality, profitability challenges
- PBOC sets USD/CNY central rate at 6.8934 (vs. yesterday at 6.9086)
- Australia - NAB November Business Conditions: 5 (prior 6) & Business Confidence 5 (prior 4)
- Australia - Q3 house price index: +1.5% q/q (expected +2.5%, previous +2.0%)
- Trump Said to Postpone Announcement on Future of His Businesses
- BlackRock outlook for U.S. Treasuries - prepare for "pain"
- UK press: UK Chancellor Hammond 'backs a slower Brexit'
- Australia - Weekly consumer sentiment (ANZ / Roy Morgan) 113.4 (prior 118.6)
- SWIFT hacking - about a fifth result in stolen funds
- Trade ideas thread - Tuesday 13 December 2016
- NZ Q3 manufacturing data - manufacturing sales rise
- NAB says EUR/USD range looks to have shifted lower, target is 0.98
A sideways sorta day for forex here in Asia with not too much movement to report.
Prior to the Chinese IP and retail sales release the focus was Australian business confidence and conditions data from the monthly National Australia Bank business survey. The survey provides a read on indicators of business conditions (such as orders, employment, profitability and capacity use), along with a gauge on confidence levels. The data is in the bullets, above, but in brief:
- Business conditions index eased from +6.6 points to +5.3 points in November ( which compares with the longer-term average of +4.8)
- While business confidence rose from +4.3 points to +5.0 points (long-term average +5.8)
So, a fall for 'conditions', but still above average, while a rise for 'confidence', but that measure is below average! Something for everyone in the results, then. A reasonable take (this is mine, anyway) is the data was not great, but not terrible. Having tread a middle path, though, taking results from this survey over the past few months the softening in the economy does not appear to be improving very much and I need to see more incoming data to be confident on the bounce back for Q4 GDP that we are being promised.
Chinese Industrial Production data for November was a beat, while the Retail Sales data was a big beat. Investment was in-line with expectations. (Insert caveat on the veracity of Chinese data here ... especially obligatory when the data shows a beat, it doesn't seem so necessary when the data is a miss ... go figure :-D ). The data is covered in the bullets, above, but here is a little more for the wrap wreaders (yeah, I know, misspelt; I like it though):
- Crude steel production +5.0% y/y, which is the strongest level of growth in over a year. Crude oil -9.0%
- Coal -5.1%
- For retail sales, in real terms spending was +9.2% y/y (+8.8% in October)
- Fixed asset investment was strong across Primary industry & and Electricity and power while weakness was concentrated in oil & gas extraction, ferrous metal mining and non-ferrous metal mining.
And so to the currencies. As I said, a relatively subdued session. USD/JPY dipped under 114.80 during the Tokyo morning but did manage a decent bounce, back to circa 115.20 and has since dipped back under the figure. Its just above there as I update. There were no pertinent comments nor much of a news flow from Japan today.
EUR and CHF both had some early strength (in very small ranges) but since retraced to be little changed on the session,. Cable did nearly nothing.
AUD and NZD, too - little changed after a small sign of early strength fizzled out.
Regional equities:
- Nikkei +0.03%
- Shanghai -0.66%
- HK -0.36%
- ASX -0.28%
