Forex news for Asia trading Wednesday 3 May 2017
– ICYMI …
AUD and NZD were standouts on a mainly subdued session.
Early in the piece we got employment data from New Zealand, with strong beats on Q1 job gains and unemployment (offset somewhat by misses on wage gains). NZD/USD (and NZ crosses) jumped on the data release. NZD/USD ran into sellers above 0.6965 and has since slipped back a little. AUD/USD had a smaller jump with the kiwi but once the NZ started its slide AUD/USD fell even harder. Part of the slide was AUD/NZD sellers but also weighing on AUD are concerns over China, with warnings in the Chinese press today on liquidity and stock market jitters. Notably the People’s Bank of China weakened the yuan (against the USD) at the central rate setting today and also injected a relatively large amount into money markets today after skipping OMOs yesterday. These are not necessarily indicative of something afoot in China, but it induced a few jitters.