Forex news for Asia trading on Friday 21 May 2021
- Japan will not administer AstraZeneca vaccine - will continue to monitor clot cases
- Some (small) USD strength showing up in Asia
- Iran is readying a hike in its oil exports to "maximum capacity" within months
- Japan's negative CPI result in April being blamed on plunge in mobile phone costs
- Australia Retail sales for April, preliminary: 1.1% m/m (expected +0.5%)
- PBOC sets USD/ CNY central rate at 6.4300 (vs. yesterday at 6.4464)
- Bank of England expected to keep bank rate at 0.1% until 2023 (an unchanged forecast)
- Australia banned Huawei 5G because of the risk China could order shut down
- Japan - Jibun Bank / Markit preliminary PMIs for May: Manufacturing 52.5 (prior 53.6)
- State of Emergency in Japan's Okinawa from May 23 to June 20
- Fed's Kaplan spoke again (US Thursday) - repeated his call for talking about taper
- South Korea first 20 days of April exports surge
- US Gulf of Mexico being watched over the weekend re hurricane developments
- Japan CPI data for April: Headline -0.4% y/y (expected -0.5%)
- UK data - GfK Consumer Confidence May -9 (expected -12, prior -15)
- Australia flash PMIs for May: manufacturing 59.9 (from 59.7 prior)
- NZ fin min says he would like to see a return to a fiscally viable position
- Coronavirus - Taiwan has suspended all shareholder meetings of listed companies to end June
- China tabloid takes the knife to Bitcoin now ... "free fall"
- A BTC ICYMI: US Treasury calls for crypto transfers over 10K to be reported to the IRS
- Deutsche Bank jumps on the BTC-bashing bandwagon - says its value is based on wishful thinking
- Trade ideas thread - Friday 21 May 2021
- US SEC official says that the public would benefit from more investor protection on crypto exchanges
There was a retracement move for the US dollar during the session here, it gained pretty much across the major FX board (to varying but small degrees), even against the resilient euro. There was no new fresh fundamental news of note, the move was a small give back of the move Thursday Europe/US time.
Coronavirus developments in Asia continue to tend negative
- while Japan is expected to approve the Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines later today the government is embracing AZ hesitancy and will not administer shots of this vaccine while it continues to monitor blood clot issues overseas
- Japan will add Okinawa prefecture to the State of Energency list
- Taiwan is suspending public company shareholder meetings (more than 1900 of them) through to June 30 as part of enhanced restriction measures
Preliminary PMIs kicked off here during the timezone. For Australia the results were still strong, albeit down from the previous month for services and the composite (manufacturing was up a touch). Japan's all fell from the previous month. Also from Japan today, national CPI was deeply negative, a huge fall in cell phone charges was by far the biggest impact. Commodity futures in China continued their sell off.
EUR resiliency:
