It
was another subdued forex session in Asia today ahead of the speech
from Federal Reserve Chair Powell coming on Friday at 10.05 am US
Eastern time.
News
and data flow was basically non-existent relevant to major FX rates.
USD/JPY
had a minor swing, down in the Tokyo morning on approach to 114.60
and then back up to just over 145.00. Its not far from that high as I
post. There was no fresh news nor data to drive the moves.
On
the central bank we had a Bank of Korea policy decision, see bullets
above but the short version is that the base rate benchmark was left
unchanged at 3.5%, where its been all year.
The
People’s Bank of China once again set the reference rate for
USD/CNY in a supportive fashion for the yuan. There have been circa
10 big figure gaps between the modelled estimate and the setting from
the PBOC all week. That continued today (just under 10 big figures).
Asian
equity markets:
-
Japan’s Nikkei 225 +0.4%
-
China’s Shanghai Composite -0.1%
-
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng +1%
-
South Korea’s KOSPI +0.9%
-
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 +0.4%
USD/CNH 5 minute candles