Forex news for Asia trading Thursday 19 February 2015
Happy New Year to all those celebrating Chinese / Lunar New Year - and welcome to the year of the goat!
USA/FOMC Minutes
- FOMC Minutes - Reactions From 10 Major Banks
- U.S. economic data - failing to meet expectations by the most in more than two years
- 5 things that worry the Federal Reserve
- Fed's Powell: Remains risk of runs in leveraged loan markets
- More from Fed's Powell: Fed does not target asset prices, looks at real-economy
- HFT firm Virtu restarting IPO
- Oil - API data - weekly crude stocks up 14.3 million barrels
Europe
- ECB approval of increase in ELA to Greece ... but is there even more required? - Daiwa research
- Head of Danish central bank says little likelihood of Denmark QE
Japan
- More detail on BOJ to consider delaying timing of 2% price target - Sankei
- Japan economy minister Amari: Corporate tax several percent lower would be better
- Japan export growth accelerates ... again
- Japan January trade balance: Y -1177.5bn (expected Y -1681.3bn)
- Japan Buying Foreign Bonds, Y 435.2B (plus, the rest of this data)
Australia & New Zealand:
- Barclays sees AUD/USD at 0.7500, more RBA rate cut, and NZD at 0.6800
- New Zealand data - ANZ consumer confidence for February: -3.8% m/m (prior +1.9% m/m)
- New Zealand data - Q4 PPI output -0.1% q/q .... and Input -0.4% q/q
- New Zealand data - ANZ job advertisements for January -1.1% m/m (prior +2.2%)
- S&P warns strained Australian budget puts ratings at risk (Wall Street Journal)
The major FX centres of Hong Kong and Singapore were closed today for the Chinese/Lunar New Year holiday, as was China. The impact was most felt in reduced liquidity - Singapore and Hong Kong banks are major interbank FX players.
Nevertheless, FX never sleeps, so on we went. the USD lost a little more ground during the session, with EUR, JPY, GBP, CHF, AUD, NZD all gaining to a greater or lesser degree. really, though, moves were small.
The yen was helped along by news (Sankei reporting) indicating the BOJ may well be considering easing off on further ... errr .... easing, perhaps accepting a delay in achieving their 2% inflation target, as well as more indications the economy is on a recovery track as exports surged yet again (see bullets, above).
The AUD (and NZD as well) took a hit on the headline from S&P headline they "warn strained Australian budget puts ratings at risk" (see bullets, above).
Still to come .... Ladies and gentlemen! Live from Brussels ... for the very first time ... ECB Minutes!
