Plenty on the economic calendar today in Asia. China will be the main focus again, but we also have a speech from the BOJ governor.

Already released this morning has been the Q4 Employment Index from New Zealand.

  • It came in at 101.5, prom a prior reading of 99.3 in Q3 (the Q3 reading was its lowest in 3 years)

The NZD is weaker than its Friday close in NY already today, along with the AUD and CAD. The recent trend has been very heavy, of course, and the fresh low this morning has been in response to the Iranian oil news over the weekend (Its official, Iran is back on the international oil market. Mike and me (I?) both had posts on this over the weekend.)

Still to come today ...

2330GMT - Australia - a private gauge of inflation, which comes out monthly: TD Securities Inflation for December, prior was 0.1% m/m and 1.8% y/y. The 'target' band for inflation the RBA has in mind is 2 to 3%, so according to my Cray supercomputer at 1.8% we are below the target band. Inflation is no impediment to further RBA rate cuts, should they judge them necessary. At present, though, the RBA is very much on hold and we should all really chill out.

ps. Official inflation data comes out on January 27, ahead of the first Reserve Bank of Australia meeting for the year, February 2.

0030GMT - New motor vehicle sales for January (priors are +1% m/m and +6% y/y).

ps. Neither then inflation nor vehicle sales data is likely to have much of an immediate impact on the AUD

0030GMT - Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Kuroda speaks at the bank's branch managers meeting. I suspect he'll tackle the thorny issue of chocolate biscuits in staff break rooms and may also mention monetary policy. On Friday he said more easing isn't likely any time soon (my assessment, his comments are at that link)

0200GMT - China - December property prices

0430GMT - Japan - Industrial Production for November (final) & Capacity utilisation

  • For, IP - the preliminary data for November showed -1% m/m and +1.6% y/y (priors were +1.4% m/m and -1.4% y/y)
  • Capacity utilization, prior was +1.3% m/m