Forex news for Asia trading Thursday 22 December 2016
- (Not FX) How, exactly, does your brain slow down time?
- 7.5% target failed, so lowered to 7%. China? Nope... CALPERS
- New Zealand November money supply data: M3 +5.9% y/y (prior +7.1%)
- China - "Factories suffer huge losses from smog shutdown"
- PBOC sets USD/CNY central rate at 6.9435 (vs. yesterday at 6.9489)
- Japan plans record $830 bln spending & MOF to reduce issuance of most JGB maturities
- NZ Q3 GDP surge - economist responses
- UK data - GK consumer confidence (December): -7 (expected -8, prior -8)
- China's Securities Times sounds like its concerned about fake news
- Euro-inflation downside risks for 2017 exposing limits to Draghi's options
- German economy to pick up further in Q4 says finance ministry
- NAB on the AUD/USD & NZD/USD - No Signs Of Base; Bearish Weekly Signals Intact
- Yen - Japanese exporters are snapping up forward exchange contracts
- Trade ideas thread - Thursday 22 December 2016
- New Zealand - Q3 GDP 1.1% q/q (expected 0.8%, prior 0.9%)
- AUD/USD, NZD/USD lower heading into NZ GDP data
Here's the 'I can't believe it isn't Friday!' wrap. It may as well be in Japan - markets are closed there on Friday for the Emperor's Day holiday long weekend.
The early focus was on New Zealand, with the 3rd quarter GDP data being released. (The deadly earthquake there in November delayed the release. Kudos to StatsNZ for getting the data out so soon.) The q/q came in at a big beat (see bullets above), but a revision to Q2 took a little bit of the shine off (why anyone cares about April to June data, I dunno). NZD had fallen in the minutes leading up to the release, AUD/USD along for the slip lower, but soon after the data release both stabilised and began to tick higher.
NZD/USD topped for the session just over 0.6920 and has since steadied around 0.6910. AUD/USD found its top for the day circa 0.7255 and is just under 0.7250 as I update now.
The yen was sedate (tomorrow's holiday may have had something to do with this), 117.40-ish to 117.70-ish the small range (highs seen around the Tokyo fix today). Japanese budget news and MoF JGB issuance news had very little impact.
EUR/USD gained a few points. USD/CHF lost a few, while cable is higher on the session. There was little news flow of import for any of these. Gold and oil are little changed.
Regional equities:
- Nikkei -0.39%
- Shanghai -0.18%
- HK -0.88%
- ASX +0.33%
Still to come:
- Plenty of data coming up in the US morning
