Forex news for Asia-Pacific trading on November 5, 2019:
- New Zealand Q3 unemployment rate 4.2% vs 4.1% expected
- China will not accept Phase One trade deal if US does not suspend tariffs - report
- Xi: China-France relations pushed to a new level
- Japan Jibun Bank services PMI 49.7 vs 50.3 prelim
- BOJ minutes: Private consumption has been increasing moderate
- Fed's Kashkari: US interest rates are now modestly accommodative
- Oil slips after US weekly private oil inventory data shows a larger-than-expected build
- Nikkei reports: China is doubling down on demands that may threaten trade deal
Markets:
- WTI crude down 32-cents to $56.92
- Nikkei 225 up 0.1%
- Yen leads, CAD lags
The main event of the day was the New Zealand jobs report. There weren't any huge surprises but the numbers were on the soft side and the odds of a cut next week moved to 60% from 54%. NZD/USD fell initially to 0.6370 from 0.6385 and later hit a low of 0.6365. Since then, the pair has stabilized near the lows of the day.
Oil came under pressure on the API build and that helped to lift USD/CAD by about 10 pips in the early going.
The newsflow continues to circle around the tariffs reduction theme in China-US talks and I expect some kind of resolution in the next couple days. The longer it goes on, the more you tend to think Trump will acquiesce but with the President nothing is ever guaranteed.
