ForexLive Asia-Pacific FX news wrap: Asian rate hikes after strong US CPI report

  • Forex news for Asian trading on Thursday, 14 July 2022

The US CPI report published Wednesday reverberated in Asia today. Expectations of further aggressive Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) rate hikes to come played a part in out-of-cycle monetary policy tightening from Singapore (see the post on the Monetary Authority of Singapore above) and the Philippines (no post above for this one, up 75bp) here in the timezone today.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore meet twice a year, in April and October. The policy tightening came after an unscheduled meeting.

USD/JPY continued its rapid climb, moving above 138 for the first time since September of 1998. The rise was halted by some verbal intervention from Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Matsuno (bullets above). There were similar remarks out of South Korea earlier in the session.

The USD also rose elsewhere (AUD excepted, I’ll come to that). GBP, EUR, NZD are all lower as I post.

On the data agenda today the focus was the Australian labour market report. It did not disappoint. There was another large rise in the number of jobs added and the unemployment rate fell to its lowest in nearly 50 years. Further shining the report was a rise in participation. Its likely such a result puts a floor under the next Reserve Bank of Australia rate hike (due August 2) at 50bp. Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Lowe has been reluctant to concede that 75bp rate hikes have been considered by the Board. The case for 75bp strengthened markedly with this labour market result today though. An alternative is to stick with 50bp in August and then again in September. Monetary policy works with a lag, a month delay is neither here nor there to the boffins at the RBA.

AUD/USD has risen on the session, shrugging off some the USD impacting flex elsewhere.

It was a toss-up between AUD and Yen charts today. Oz won:

aud wrap 14 July 2022

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