Forex and Bitcoin news for Asia trading Thursday 19 April 2018
- Protectionism is the main risk to Europe's robust economic growth this year
- Moody’s on Russia: Sovereign resilient to new US sanctions
- Japan's Nishimura says no Trump - Abe discussion on FX rates at all
- RBNZ's own inflation measure out now: 1.5% y/y (previous was 1.5%)
- Australian jobs report - responses coming in
- China Commerce Ministry - China prepared to respond on trade dispute with US
- Australian business confidence for Q1: 7 (prior 7, revised from 6)
- Australia March Employment change: +4.9K (vs. expected +20K)
- Kiwibank: N.Z. CPI underscores no RBNZ tightening in 12 months
- Trump: I would much prefer a bilateral deal with Japan
- NZ 1Q CPI QoQ 0.5% vs. 0.4% expected. YoY 1.1% vs. 1.1% expected.
The Nikkei opened better bid again on the session today, helping USD/JPY on its way to a higher session. This is Asia, so the move wasn't large, but USD/yen popped 107.50 during the Tokyo morning before coming to rest just under there as I update. There were comments out of the US / Japan talks in Florida (Trump / Abe talks) - it seems there is some scope for the US to back off on tariffs that may impact Japan. Also that Japan prefers a multi-lateral trade deal (hello TPP) and not necessarily a bilateral one with the US.
NZ inflation data (for Q1, we only get New Zealand CPI once a quarter, as with Australian inflation, which comes out next week ... but I digress) came out today, a touch above estimates for the q/q, while y/y was in line. There is no pressure from inflation for the RBNZ to move rates up, inflation still below target. On the session NZD/USD is little net changed after small gyrations only. Later in the session we got an RBNZ preferred inflation measure (see bullets above), also showing below target.
The Australian March employment report was a bit of a disappointment, with revisions to February (lower) compounding the lacklustre result. It wasn't an overly bad report, but it confirms a loss of momentum in hiring. The Australian dollar was marked lower, off by around 20 or points but it recovered over the following hour or so and then popped above 0.7800 to a new session high and has barely retraced since then. While the data wasn't great the better tone for commodities did the AUD no harm today.
Cable is little changed after a small range on the session, ditto for EUR/USD and USD/CHF. USD/CAD is net down a few points after some follow through buying that took it toward 1.2650 (didn't quite get there) petered out.
Still to come:
