The forex trading headlines for Asia trading today, Thursday June 13
The driver was the Nikkei again, but plenty of data to report first.
Japan data: International Transactions in Securities (week ended June 7)
- Japan Buying Foreign Bonds Y -386.9 B (prior week was Y -1172.5B)
- Japan Buying Foreign Stocks Y -221.8B (prior week was Y -137.3B)
- Foreign Buying Japan Bonds Y -280.0B (prior week was Y -119.7B)
- Foreign Buying Japan Stocks Y 113.6B (prior week was Y -191.1B)
- Australian employment change for May +1.1K (vs. -10k expected)
- Australian Unemployment rate 5.5% (expected 5.6%)
- Australian Full time employment change-5.3K (prior was +29.8K, revised from +34,500)
- Australian Part-time employment change:+6.4K (prior was 15.3K, revised from 15,600)
- Australian Participation rate; 65.2% (vs. expected is 65.2%) More details of the employment report here
- Australia : Melbourne Institute Consumer Inflation Expectations for June: 2.3% (vs. 2.3% prior)
- New Zealand left there benchmark cash rate unchanged at 2.5%, as expected
- The BoJ offered to buy 200B yen debt with maturity 10+ years and to buy 450B yen debt with maturity 5 to 10 years
- The World Bank cuts its global growth forecasts
- China markets reopened after being closed on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday
Plenty of official comments for the market to chew over today:
- RBNZ’s governor Wheeler said the NZD remains overvalued (and more here, that he is prepared to intervene in the currency, more here, may use macro-prudential tools to cool the housing market, here) Link to RBNZ’s policy assessment and full statement (PDF)
- BOJ Board member Shirai comments from a speech delivered today: Japan’s economy is likely to resume moderate recovery (more here). Shirai is holding a press conference at 0500GMT.
- Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Suga said it was important to calmly watch stock market movement
- BOJ ‘s executive director for monetary affairs Amamiya: BOJ watches interest rates moves closely, and more here and here. And Reuters brief report on his comments here.
Most of the action today was again in yen crosses, NZD and AUD.
The Nikkei opened lower n the day and proceeded to get sold very, very hard indeed (as lows as 12415.85). USD/JPY fell with it, filling in buy orders ahead of around 95.00 and then triggering stops below to dip down to 94.44. As the Nikkei bounced back (12720.24 high on the bounce as I write) USD/JPY recovered asd trades 94.84/87 as I write.
NZD/USD sold off on the New Zealand interest rate ‘unchanged’ decision, not in direct response to the decision which was expected by economists surveyed, but in response to Wheeler’s comments that the market perceived as not hawkish enough. Given Wheeler’s desire to see a lower NZD his perceived lack of hawkishness may well have been premeditated. NZD further lost ground with cross selling against the yen as USD/JPY fell later.
AUD/USD was quiet heading into the employment report (see bullets, above, for details of the report). AUD/JPY, though, was getting hit hard as the Nikkei and USD/JPY fell. AUD/USD jumped above 0.9500 on the employment report release (the headline figure was better than expected) to a high of 0.9520, but plummeted to 0.9425/30 quickly thereafter. It chopped around 30/60 after that in low-volume trading.
