The forex trading headlines for Asia trading today, Friday May 10
- USD/JPY through 100 in the New York afternoon, and above 101 during the Tokyo morning
In other news:
- Data from Japan showed, Japan Buying Foreign Bonds for the week ended May 3 was Y309.9bn, and Y204bn the previous week. The first time since mid-December 2012 that Japanese investors bought foreign bonds for two consecutive weeks, and the first outflows into foreign bonds for 7 weeks. The amount is not large, though.
- Japan Buying Foreign Stocks for the week ended May 3 Y28.0 bn
- Foreign Buying Japan Bonds for the week ended May 3 Y267.0 bn
- Foreign Buying Japan Stocks for the week ended May 3 Y-26.2 bn
- Japan trade balance for March -Y219.9 bn (vs. expected -Y274.0bn)
- Japan Current Account Total for March Y1251.2 bn (vs. expected y1220.0bn)
- Japan Bank Lending Ex-Trusts 2.1% y/y April % (prior was +1.9%)
- Japan Bank Lending incl Trusts 1.7% y/y April % (prior was +1.6%)
- New Zealand debit/credit card retail spending +0.6% m/m (vs. +0.5% expected)
- New Zealand debit/credit card total spending +1.1% m/m (vs. -1.2% prior)
- The Reserve Bank of Australia released its quarterly Statement on Monetary Policy, link to full text, and link to quick summary
OK, let’s once again get the laggards out of the way. After active sessions in Europe and North America, EUR and GBP had nearly-nothing ranges in Asia today.
Most of the action was centred on the yen. USD/JPY, after spending a month trying to get through 100 wasted very little time on cracking 101. There was barrier-related selling ahead of 101 but the yen bears bulldozed those after only a short time in the morning. Yen crosses were higher with the USD/JPY. Japanese importers drove USD demand into the fix, but, to be honest, there were buyers aplenty, from everywhere. USD/JPY reached as high as 101.15/20 before exhausting the upmove, at least for the day, having another look below 101 into the Tokyo lunch and early afternoon.
NZD and AUD showed a good amount of activity. NZD fell less than AUD in the overnight and retraced a good portion of its decline. It ran into solid offers again, though, from above 0.8410.
AUD/USD bounced to just below 1.01 and consolidated in a 55/90 range through the session.
