The forex trading headlines for Asia trading today, Wednesday May 29
- BOJ head Kuroda spoke in Tokyo today but without saying anything noteworthy (highlights and link to full text from here)
- Japan April Retail Trade showed better than expected results, at +0.7% m/m (s.a.) (vs. +0.2% expected)
- Japan April Retail Trade for the y/y came in at -0.1% (expected was -0.4%)
- The Bank of Japan bought Japanese government bonds today:
- 300B yen of debt of 10year+ maturity
- 700B yen in 1 to 5 year debt
- 20B yen in inflation-linked debt
- Australia: Westpac March Leading Index +0.2% m/m (vs. +0.6% prior)
- Australia: April HIA New Home sales: +3.9% m/m (vs. +4.2% prior)
- Australia Q1 Construction Work Completed: -2.0% q/q (s.a.) (vs. +1.0% expected)
- PIMCO published a report on Australia: ‘Filling the Hole We Have Dug’. Within 10 minutes of the reports publication the Australian dollar was hit 40 points lower (headlines on the wires, link to full report from here)
- BHP selling coal assets and not embarking on new coal-mining projects
- “China not facing a public debt crisis” : ex Goldman Sachs economist
- IMF cuts China growth outlook to 7.75% from 8%
There was early (or late New York, if you prefer) USD strength to get the ball rolling today, especially against the NZD and AUD. EUR/USD and GBP/USD fell away a little but the European currencies were not where the action was.
AUD and NZD drifted toward their earlier overnight lows. AUD//USD was hit lower very hard a few minutes after the PIMCO headlines hit the wires (see bullets, above), with NZD dragged lower along with it. AUD/USD continued to trade in a heavy fashion for the rest of the day, registering a low of 0.9547 before finding a little support. The bounce was limited to 70/75 and it goes into early Europe (as of writing) around 0.9560.
USD/JPY had a bit of movement today, getting as high as 102.50/55 in the morning, but losing ground as the Nikkei stock index lost ground, back to 102.00/05 before stabilizing. It tracked sideways for the balance of the session and ticked a little higher into very early Europe around 102.22/27 as of writing.
The Nikkei opened strongly today and traded immediately higher but could not sustain gains and soon fell below opening levels, finding some support below 14300.
