The forex trading headlines for Asia trading today, Tuesday May 21
- Japan’s economy minister Amari hit the headlines again today, softening his weekend comments.
- Re Amari: Reports that his weekend comments were misread. He didn’t say it in the way it was reported in English
- Amari: “I hope (foreign exchange) levels will settle so they match the basic strength of the Japanese economy”
- Amari: “I’ve mentioned in the past that the (yen’s) excessive aspects were in the process of being corrected. But I won’t comment on whether it has in fact been corrected, or to where it would be corrected, or whether (the correction) is over,”
- Amari: It may be hard to lower the corporate tax due to fiscal position
- Japan’s finance minister Aso: Hopes that BOJ head Kuroda will keep close communications with the market (more here)
- According to a Reuters Corporate Survey, 48% of Japan firms want USD/JPY to stabilize around 100; this is, in part, due to concerns of rising import costs as the yen weakens (and more here)
- The Reserve Bank of Australia released the minutes of the May 7 board meeting, where rates were cut: summary, and link to full text
- Reserve Bank of New Zealand 2-year inflation expectation results for Q2 were subdued, coming in at 2.06% (vs. 2.2% prior)
- New Zealand April Credit Card Spending up 0.4% m/m (vs. -0.3% prior)
- New Zealand April Credit Card Spending up 4.0% y/y (vs. +3.6% y/y in prior month)
- Conference Board March Leading Index for Australia: +0.1% (vs. +0.3% prior), an improvement for the third consecutive month
- UBS cut its China GDP forecast (2013) to 7.7% from 8%
- Former Italian PM Monti: Italy is not heading for another election in the next 6 months, and he says he sees ‘remarkable’ continuity of Italian government policy (more comments here)
- Taiwan says it is planning economic stimulus measures
Like it says in the headline it was all Amari again today. he softened his weekend comments, sending USD/JPY from 102.10/15 to above 102.75 before calm could return the market. In the process the USD strengthened across the baord.
EUR/USD fell from testing 1.2900 to 1.2860/65. As the Amari effect receded it retraced nearly all its losses and goes into very early Europe just below 1.2900.
GBP/USD fell too, getting pushed from 1.5273/78 back to touch 1.520/25 before it, too, retraced its Amari-induced losses.
AUD/USD suffered the most, falling to 0.9755/60. Like EUR and GBP it recovered. The release of the RBA minutes of the May 7 meeting had little impact, they contained nothing we didn’t already know.
NZD/USD was once again a string performer. It lost ground with the USD strength but recovered nearly all of those losses. The RBNZ inflation expectations report came in subdued, which then saw NZD slow and consolidate near the top of the day’s range.
