Forex news for Asia trading Thursday 5 March 2015

  • AUD surge pre-RBA announcement - "ASIC's currency probe a big task"
  • Greece needs to refinance or repay about 6.5bn EUR in debt & interest in the next 3 weeks
  • JP Morgan ... euro to parity, ECB deposit rate to minus one to minus 3%
  • "Her forecasts as a Fed official have been strikingly accurate"
  • More from RBA's Lowe: Scope to lower interest rates if appropriate
  • RBNZ mulls new property lending rules
  • BOJ's Kiuchi: Should make timeframe for 2% inflation target a flexible one
  • RBA's Lowe: RBA board noted further easing may be appropriate
  • Report: Australia's population will live longer and be poorer over the next 40 years
  • Australia - Trade balance for January: -980m (expected -925m)
  • Australian Retail Sales for January: +0.4% m/m (expected +0.4%)
  • China Premier Li says 2015 GDP growth target around 7%
  • Japan buying foreign bonds Y 470.9bn (and the rest of this data)
  • Federal Reserve speaker coming up at 0000GMT
  • Brazil's 4th consecutive rate hike ... battling inflation
  • Suppose they gave a (currency) war and nobody came? Brazil raises rates
  • Analyst expects Greek government battle with Troika to rage again- 'dark days for euro'
  • More on the 'leak' ahead of the RBA announcement that saw AUD surge

It was an 'around' day in Asia.

At the Chinese National People's Congress Premier Li announced that the 2015 GDP target would be 'around' 7.5%. 'Around' was jumped on, the thinking being that the target would be lower. I thought that was without doubt already, but there you go.

Apart from the AUD and NZD on the session, currency moves were subdued. EUR drifted in a small range and ends the session pretty much on its lows.

GBP/USD was pretty much the same. USD/CHF ticked higher, though, gaining around 25 or so points. USD/JPY up a similar amount from its earlier lows.

AUD and NZD were volatile, though, although the ranges were not huge.Notable flows were AUD/NZD buying, AUD/USD buying (though there was a flurry of selling on RBA deputy governor Lowe's early comments, here, and buying on the later ones, here), and NZD/USD selling. The Kiwi $ was hit hard, down 50+ points.Although the AUD/USD is barely changed from where I walked in earlier it did have spikes towards 0.7800 and 0.7840.

Still to come ... ECB meeting coming up today. Here are 5 questions for Draghi ....