Forex news for Asia trading Wednesday 27 January 2016

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  • World Bank forecasts iron ore prices likely to post biggest loss among metals this year
  • Xinhua: China hard landing - Soros has made the same prediction several times
  • Moody's: UK house price rises will be moderate following help-to-buy scheme's expansion
  • Ex-PBOC adviser: Loosen mon pol, expand fiscal pol, adopt flexible FX rate
  • Australian Q4 inflation data - "This was a soft update on inflation"
  • FOMC preview "5 things to watch"
  • BoA / Merrill Lynch's - FX Trading Strategy For H1 2016
  • China - Westpac MNI Consumer Sentiment Indicator up 1% January
  • RBNZ monetary policy announcement due Wednesday 2000GMT
  • Moody's on China: Pursuit of growth target risks extending imbalances
  • China data - Industrial profits for December: -4.7% y/y (prior -1.4%)
  • PBOC sets yuan reference rate for today at 6.5533
  • Australia Q4 CPI: 0.4% q/q (vs. 0.3% expected)
  • NZ PM Key to bring forward funding for Auckland rail expansion
  • Australia leading index for December: -0.3% m/m (prior -0.2%)
  • China press: RRR cut is necessary, there is room for a cut
  • Here's one for all you old traders out there: new Plaza Accord needed!
  • NY Times write on "How stories drive the stock market". Here's why they are wrong.
  • Australian weekly consumer confidence data: 112.2 (prior 113.2)
  • American Petroleum Institute (API) crude oil inventories up 11.4 million bbls
  • Apple Q1 results: EPS $3.28 Revenue $75.9bn
  • China - National Bureau of Statistics chief Wang Baoan detained - graft investigation
  • Trade ideas thread for Wednesday 27 January 2016

Was it a USD story today ahead of the FOMC? I don't think so, but nevertheless it was a day of a little weakness.

Oil was soft yet again, API data showing a big inventory build last week not helping the price at all. That other scary story, China, saw stocks slip again today, though the weakness didn't spread to Japan or HK.

USD/JPY traded lower, nothing large, but off towards 118.00 at one stage and its just above here as i update. EUR ticked a little higher early, gave it all back but popped again. its finding 1.0870 a little hard to overcome today so far. The yen was the outperformer of these two, EUR/JPY is down 40 points from early highs.

AUD is pretty much unchanged on the session, but saying that misses the moves. it drifted lower early, under 0.70 before popping on a slightly higher than expected headline inflation data print. After last week's NZ inflation data came in so low thoughts were that if the Australian data was going to surprise it would be to the downside. Like I said, though, the headline was marginally higher than consensus median (the details are worth checking out, they were soft despite the headline) which saw some short-cover taking place. 0.7040 and thereabouts topped it and its slipped back toward 0.70 (but not quite getting there as i update. I thought it might have had the legs to trigger more stops above 0.7050 but that hasn't been the case so far. if we can regain the session high during London though I expect we'll finally have a go above 50. But maybe I'm just stubborn.

Cable and USD/CHF barely changed.

Gold hasn't done a real lot and is little changed on the day.

The USD/CNY mid-point was set ever so slightly lower (for a stronger yuan again.)

Regional equities:

  • Nikkei +1.81%
  • Shanghai -2.81%
  • HK +0.56%
  • ASX -1.22%

Still to come:

  • FOMC preview "5 things to watch"
  • RBNZ monetary policy announcement due Wednesday 2000GMT