Forex news for Asia trading Wednesday 20 November 2019
- Japan's Economy minister Nishimura says economic stimulus package will be sizeable
- Risks to markets next year - here are the top 20 for 2020 from Deutsche Bank
- View on the RBA - easing bias remains in place (& threat of QE) should cap the AUD
- Some Canadian politics - Trudeau to appoint Freeland as Deputy Prime Minister
- AUD/JPY getting hit again as China threatens to retaliate against the US over Hong Kong bill
- China 1 year and 5 year prime loan rates both cut
- China says the US should stop interfering in Hong Kong and China affairs - threatens retaliation
- Hong Kong gov says the US bill is unnecessary, ungrounded and that foreign govmts should not interfere
- PBOC sets USD/ CNY reference rate for today at 7.0118 (vs. yesterday at 7.0030)
- Fitch ratings affirms China's A+ rating, outlook maintained at stable
- More on the falling Australian leading index
- US Sec of Commerce Ross says optimistic on getting a trade deal done with China
- Japan trade balance for October Y 17.3bn (expected Y 229.3bn)
- Japan trade data for October coming up soon - imports are expected to have plummeted
- Australia - Westpac leading indicator for October: -0.07% m/m (prior -0.12%)
- US-China relations: US Senate passes bill in support of Hong Kong protests
- Australian bank accused of breaching anti-money laundering laws … 23 million times
- The resistance just ahead for EUR/USD - lack of volatility helping it to hold … but …
- NZD traders - BNZ have bumped up their Fonterra milk price forecast for 2019/20
- Trade ideas thread - Wednesday 20 November 2019
- Private oil data shows than larger thank expected build in crude oil inventory
US-China relations again to the fore today. The US Senate passed bills in support of Hong Kong. This was negative for 'risk' (AUD/JPY dropped, for example - see first blue line on chart below).
A little after this US Commerce Sec Ross appeared on Fox indicating he was still hopeful of a trade deal. This gave back a little support to risk, indeed AUD/USD popped to a session high circa 0.6830 after the remarks (see second blue line on chart below - note this is the AUD/yen chart, not AUD/USD).
Soon after, though, China reacted angrily to the US Senate moves, saying foreign legislatures should butt out of internal affair matters and promising retaliation if the bills become law (there are further processes to go through for the bills to pass into law, including crossing Trump's desk). Needless to say, AUD took a tumble, hitting a fresh session low towards 0.6810 against the US and with the yen strengthening again also a session low for AUD/JPY ( see third blue line on chart below).
Yen, of course, benefitted from flows inward while EUR, GBP, NZD, CAD all saw falls alongside AUD. USD/CHF is little net changed though.
Other news and data was of little impact. Notably, we saw further (small) rate cuts in China today, with both the one-year and five-year Loan Prime Rate (LPR) cut by 5bp.
Japanese trade data showed a big slump for both exports and imports.
Still to come: