The forex trading headlines for Asia trading today, Monday June 17
From the weekend:
- China’s main holding company for state-owned financial firms, bought shares of Everbright Bank and New China Life Insurance on the secondary market in Shanghai on Thursday and Friday
- BOJ to increase its purchases of J-Reits
- France bans shipment of Gold, Silver and cash through the mail system
- Australia’s gold output down 5 pct in Q1
- Hilsenrath says to watch the economic projections made by the Fed this week as an indicator of when the winding back of asset purchases is likely to begin
Monday:
- Japan: Tertiary Industry Index +0.0% m/m (vs. +0.2% expected)
- New Zealand Westpac consumer confidence for Q2 at 116.6 (vs. 110.8 prior) – highest in 3 years
- New Zealand service PMI for May 56.2 (vs. 56.2 prior, revised up from 56.1)
- UK Rightmove House Prices for Jun +1.2% m/m (vs. +2.1% prior)
- UK Rightmove House Prices for Jun +2.7% y/y (vs. +2.5% prior)
- Australia New Motor Vehicle Sales for May 0.0% m/m (vs. -1.7% prior, revised from -1.6%)
- Australia New Motor Vehicle Sales for May 0.2% y/y (vs.+3.2% prior, revised from +3.3%)
- New Zealand Institute of Economic Research raised its GDP forecast for New Zealand for 2014/15
Bank of Japan bought government debt from the market
- 110bn yen in under 1 year maturity JGBs
- 100bn yen in 1 to 3 year maturities
- 400bn yen in 3-5 year
- Cyprus bail-in, now in the UK? Co-op Bank “bail-in” converts loans to shares
- Japan to issue inflation-linked bonds
- Reminder, the G8 meeting starts today, June 17 and 18 in Northern Ireland
EUR and GBP were both relatively quiet, but both drifted lower through the course of the day. EUR/USD had an early 10-point move higher from opening levels, and from there just slid quietly lower. EUR/JPY popped a bit higher on the day, but that was largely yen-related.
AUD gapped a little lower in the morning. Weekend news and views on China were quite negative, with doom-and-gloom splashed over the press (see bullets, above). It had recovered its gap by the time Sydney started to get active, though, and traded higher throughout the morning, only stabilizing once it was above 0.9600, ahead of 0.9620.
NZD largely followed the AUD pattern, ending the day higher than its opening levels.
USD/JPY opened not far from last week’s lows, but once the Nikkei opened and started to find some early strength USD/JPY traded higher, only stopping ahead of reported sellers from 94.80 to 95.00. The BOJ bought JGBs today (see bullets, above), helping to lend some support to USD/JPY.
After last week’s repeated price insanity in the Asian timezone, it was a relatively quiet day.
