- The Reserve Bank of Australia left its cash rate target unchanged at 3% today. The accompanying statement was perceived by the market as more dovish than expected.
- New Zealand Q4 Average Earnings Change -0.4% Q/Q (vs. +0.4% expected)
- Australia January AIG Services PMI improved a little to 45.3 (vs. 43.2 prior)
- Australia December Trade Balance, Deficit of 427M (vs. -800M expected)
- Australian House Prices +1.6% Q/Q (vs. +0.3% expected)
- Australian House Prices +2.1% Y/Y (vs. +0.9% expected)
- January HSBC China Services PMI had a big improvement to 54 (vs. 51.7 prior)
- China’s big four banks’ new loans rise to 370 billion yuan in January: paper
- South Korean President Lee Myung Bak said Monday that North Korea is likely to conduct at least two nuclear tests simultaneously,
- Banco de México Head Agustin Carstens: Global weakness to persist for years
- OECD’s Gurria said he sees as ‘unfortunate’ the reversal of recent normalisation of long-term debt yields for Spain, Italy
- Gurria also said it was politics pushing up Italy, Spain debt yields
Yen was the mover today, with selling of EUR/JPY and USD/JPY in the morning down to bids around 124.25 and 92.00. Importer selling of Yen kicked in from here, taking it back up to around 124.95/00 and 95.50/55.
EUR/USD was heavy in a tight range, sitting around 1.3500 for most of the session.
AUD traded higher as we approached the 0330GMT RBA announcement. It popped up to 1.0450/55 highs after the announcement and then was hit immediately down to 1.0420/25 before some two-way activity and thence under 1.0400
