Forex news for Asia trading Wednesday 30 March 2016
- CBA says a rising AUD will not prompt an RBA rate cut
- Air NZ looking to sell its stake in Aussie airline?
- RBNZ intervention in February? Err ... No.
- Westpac / MNI China Consumer Sentiment (March) 118.1 (prior 111.3)
- ADB forecasts China GDP growth at 6.5% (2016) & 6.3% (2017)
- PBOC sets yuan reference rate for today at 6.4841 (vs. yesterday at 6.5060)
- Barclays on the main takeaway from Yellen’s speech
- Japan: Industrial production drops most since 2011
- Japan: Industrial production for February (preliminary): -6.2% m/m (expected -5.9%)
- China press (opinion piece) - Top task for mon pol is stabilising growth
- China's pension fund to flow into stock market this year
- China's large banks wary on plan for bad loans to equity swaps
- Australia data - ANZ weekly Consumer Confidence 114.5 (prior 116.0)
- New Zealand - Building permits for February +10.8% m/m (prior -8.2%)
- Fed's Kaplan: Wage pressures do not necessarily translate into price pressures
- Oil - American Petroleum Institute (API) data - Inventory build of 2.6mln barrels
- Yellen's Fed gets global: "We are the world!"
- Trade ideas corner - Wednesday 30 March 2016
It was Yellen hangover day in Asia, with markets shocked, shocked I tell you, that Ms. Yellen was dovish. Who could possibly have seen THAT coming? (I'm trusting my sarcasm is coming across OK in pixel?)
There was follow-through selling of USD/JPY, but not a huge amount, down around 20-odd points from 4pm NY time. EUR,CHF, GBP all did little against the USD during the session here.
In local developments, NZ Building Consents (permits) came in at a whopping... you better brace yourself for this ... no really ... 35% gain y/y in February. Admittedly this is a volatile data set, but that's a huge result. NZD/USD continued its gains after the data, but has topped ahead of 0.6900. Local news that AirNZ is likely to sell its stake in an Australian airline has been doing NZD no harm against the AUD, though we had some retracement today with the news (once news like this is out there the currency portion of the transaction has generally been covered already).
Japanese industrial production came in at its worst m/m drop since March of 2011.
The PBOC strengthened the yuan at the mid-point setting again today, in line with the weaker USD across the board.
Local stock markets were happy with Yellen, except Japan which flatly refused to get with the program.
Regional equities:
- Nikkei -0.54%
- Shanghai +1.44%
- HK +1.40%
- ASX +0.07%
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