- South Korea has tightened COVID-19 restrictions to combat its latest case load surge
- China's state planner says electricity consumption +11.4% y/y for January to November
- Australia mid year budget & economic update forecasts 3.75% GDP in 2021/22
- FX option expiries for 16 December 2021 at the 10am New York cut
- Reddit has filed for an IPO
- CEO of Intel says semiconductor chip shortage impact to continue beyond 2022, into 2023
- Taiwan continues with moves to prevent the leak of sensitive technologies to the mainland
- PBOC sets USD/ CNY reference rate for today at 6.3637 (vs. estimate at 6.3625)
- Japan preliminary PMIs for December - Manufacturing 54.2 (prior 54.5) Services 51.1 (53.0)
- Australian employment report for November: Employment Change: +366.1K (expected 200K)
- RBA Governor Lowe repeats that in no hurry to raise interest rates
- Australian Consumer Inflation Expectation for December 4.8% (prior 4.6%)
- Japan trade balance for November shows a larger than expected deficit
- South Korea's Vice Fin Min says prepared to stabilise markets if necessary
- RBA Gov. Lowe says not his job to target high house prices, higher rates not the solution
- Chinese government increasing its ownership stake in firms holding critical data
- Analyst tips a slump in the economy will delay the first FOMC rate hike until June 2022
- Analyst tips a surge in Omicron will delay the first FOMC rate hike until May 2022
- Australia Markit preliminary PMIs for December: Manufacturing 57.4 (prior 59.2)
- Australia's largest mortgage lender hikes its fixed rate loans (again)
- New Zealand Q3 GDP beats expectations, comes in at -3.7% q/q (vs. -4.5% expected)
- BoA expect the Federal Reserve to hike in March 2022
- Stock losing streaks are snapped. Stocks close near session highs
- Trade ideas thread - Thursday 16 December 2021
The Federal Open Market Committee moves are here ICYMI:
Major FX rates in Asia traded tightly range bound through the session here. NZD/USD and AUD/USD are both net a few points lower. From New Zealand earlier in the session we had the data for Q3 GDP, its came in less bad than expected. From Australia we had a speech and Q&A from Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Lowe in which he outlined what the Bank was considering re QE bond-buying. Lowe kept his options open but did say a February taper is a scenario under consideration. On rate hikes Lowe emphasised, once again, that lift-off was still a long way in the future. Lowe acknowledged that if the RBA stayed on hold with its cash rates while other central banks were tightening it was a negative input for the AUD rate. This is obvious but Lowe made a point of making the point. After Lowe spoke we had labour market data for Australia in November from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This was a very good report indeed with a surge in jobs added and a sharp drop in the unemployment rate (accompanied by a solid rise in participation).
As mentioned, on balance AUD has lost a little ground on the session.
