Forex news for Asia trading Thursday 18 August 2016
- BoJ, MoF, FSA meeting at 1.50 in the Tokyo afternoon
- China house price data for July: +7.9% y/y (prior +7.3%)
- Australia Employment change (July): +26.2K (expected +10K)
- Japan MoF: Will act appropriately if excessive FX moves
- People’s Bank of China sets yuan reference rate at 6.6273 (vs. yesterday at 6.6056)
- USD/JPY - BOJ ring around?
- NZ data - ANZ Consumer Confidence for August: 117.7 (prior 118.2)
- Trade ideas thread - Thursday 18 August 2016
Another relatively quiet day for news and data in Asia today, but what we did get was significant and currency moves were at times quite sharp.
USD/JPY dropped below 100 as Tokyo morning trade got underway, and extended losses to circa 99.65 before holding and settling into a sideways trade for a couple of hours. There were rumours of a BOJ ring around (unconfirmed and given the relative lack of response unlikely), a poor set of trade balance numbers:
- Trade surplus of 513.5 billion yen ($5.1 billion) in July
- Exports down a whopping 14% y/y (weak external demand cited)
- And a huge 25% drop in imports y/y (weak domestic demand cited!)
- Both of these drops are the biggest y/y since 2009
- Japan's exports to China down 13% in July y/y
- Exports to the US down 12% y/y
We got some jawboning again today from the Ministry of Finance's Asakawa, the usual stuff, and also an announcement of a meeting between the BOJ, MoF and FSA for Thursday afternoon (Tokyo time). This meeting is a regular weekly occurrence.
USD/JPY managed to climb back above the figure and its consolidating a little around 100.10 as I update.
Also this morning we got consumer confidence data from NZ, which showed a dip on the month. The NZD traded higher regardless.
From Australia it was the monthly employment lottery report day. The headline result was a big beat on expectations, but the details were not so hot. Full time jobs fell, part time jobs rose. Just between you and me the jump in jobs was likely impacted by the extended process of counting the election result (remember that? It took forever!). The details are in the buller (above) - it wasn;t a bad report, but it wasn't as good as the headline would have you believe. The steady unemployment rate, though, should mean the RBA remains on hold for another few months at least.
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Coverage was lighter than normal in Asia today. I had some network issues so apologies for any inconvenience.
Still to come, due at 0450GMT - BoJ, MoF, FSA meeting at 1.50 in Tokyo
