Forex news for Asia trading Thursday 30 April 2020
- China expecting to see substantial, but reduced, travel over the May Day long weekend
- Five Chinese cities, provinces to allow expedited entry for South Korean businesspeople from May
- We've just had the PMIs from China, is manufacturing weaker than is being shown though?
- Goldman Sachs is very downbeat on Australia's real rate of joblessness
- China - Caixin/Markit Manufacturing PMI for April: 49.4 (expected 50.5)
- Australia Q1 import and export price indexes
- Australia Private Sector Credit for March: +1.1% m/m (expected 0.3%)
- PBOC sets USD/ CNY reference rate for today at 7.0571 (vs. yesterday at 7.0704 )
- FX option expiries for Thursday April 30 at the 10am NY cut
- China official PMIs for April. Manufacturing 50.8 (expected 51.0)
- NZ April business confidence -66.6
- Trump's harsh words on China impacting 'risk' trade lower
- Japan PM Abe on coronavirus outbreak - severe situation is continuing
- US President Trump interview: Trade deal with China has been upset very badly
- BOJ ETF purchases to track Japan stock market indexes
- Japan Retail sales for March: -4.5% m/m (vs. expected -4.5%)
- Japan Industrial Production for March (preliminary): -3.7% m/m (expected -5.0%)
- US coronavirus news - Tyson Fresh Meats pausing production at its Dakota City beef facility
- USD/JPY at risk of dropping under 106?
- HK on holiday today - big week of holidays coming up for Japan
- Coronavirus cure? - "Put down the bleach, remdesivir is coming"
- Oil update ICYMI - US gasoline stocks fall, sign of demand increasing?
- NZD has potential for 0.58 in the months ahead
- US exploring ways to store another several hundred million barrels of oil
- Venezuela asks Bank of England to sell its gold
- More from Trump - says he will have a plan to help the oil industry shortly
- Trade ideas thread - Thursday 30 April 2020
- Trump coronavirus comments - target date for reopening is as soon as possible
- US coronavirus - Florida Governor says the state to begin reopening on Monday 4 May
- Norway will cut its oil output
It was an active day for news and data here in Asia today.
The session opened with a statement from Norway on their plans to cut oil output in H2 of this year, which gave oil a bit of a boost. There is plenty of work to do on improving demand for oil, but in the meantime the supply response will have to suffice. Comments also out of the US re looking to further boost storage options helped add to the net bid for oil.
Gold news was next, with Reuters reporting Venezuela is requesting the Bank of England sell its gold to help fund coronavirus relief. Net there was little price impact though.
US President Trump was interviewed by Reuters, he spoke of the difficulties with the phase one trade deal and alluded to options he had to retaliate against China re the coronavirus outbreak. These remarks were a negative for (not all) currencies against the USD although the scale of the moves were not large and there have been retracements subsequently. EUR, AUD, NZD, GBP, even yen and CHF all lost some ground against the big dollar. CAD has maintained some gains against the USD, helped along by firmer oil.
For data, the most focus today was on China and its April PMIs (manufacturing and services from the National Bureau of Statistics and manufacturing from Markit/Caixin). These were divergent, with the official PMIs in expansion while the private survey PMI dropped into contraction again. Currency impact was barely noticeable.
And, finally, a heads up for AUD traders - there is a large option expiry in play today (see the post above) that was a factor in some of the AUD selling today.
