ForexLive Asia-Pacific FX news wrap: AUD and NZD round-trips during the session

  • Forex news for Asian trading on Friday, 1 December 2023

The Australian and New Zealand dollars rallied early against the USD, reaching highs towards 0.6630 and above 0.6190 respectively. As I update both have given back all their gains that left each barely changed on the session (NZD/USD is up a few tics net).

It’s a similar pattern for EUR/USD and GBP/USD.

USD/JPY dropped back under 148.00 but as I update its circa 148.10 again. From Japan today came strong Q3 corporate capex, sales and profits data. The manufacturing PMI, though, slipped deeper into contraction. As did the Australian manufacturing PMI. The surprise came from China. Yesterday we had worrying misses for the official PMIs, with manufacturing also slipping deeper into contraction. That story flipped today with the privately surveyed Caixin Manufacturing PMI for November comprehensively beating estimates to bounce back into expansion at 50.7.

  • the new order index hit its highest for the second half of 2023
  • more concerning, overseas demand continued to fall deeper into the contraction zone

Back to Japan and the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (JTUC, more commonly known as Rengo) says it agreed to demand a 5% or more wage hike in pay negotiations with employers coming up in March 2024, the "spring labor offensive" or "shunto" in Japanese.

nzdusd wrap chart 01 December 2023

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