Asia Summary and Highlights 24 October

Asia Session

Finally, we are hearing some verbal intervention from Japanese officials, with Japan finance minister Kato saying rapid moves seen in recent FX market and Japan's Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Kazuhiko Aoki says watching for speculative FX moves. As pale as those words are, such are signs that the latest JPY weakness have caught their eyes. We do not see an immediate intervention in the FX market but the pace of rally will likely moderates for a while. USD/JPY is down 0.3% at 152.28 when both the U.S. Treasury and JGB yields lower.

The regional sentiment is sour and USD broadly lower on Thursday's Asia session. U.S. three major equity indexes have their toes in the green. Benefiting from the weakness in USD, AUD/USD is 0.17% at 0.6645, NZD/USD is down 0.15% at 0.6014 while USD/CAD slipped 0.09% at 1.3822as oil gains more than half a dollar. Else, EUR/USD is up 0.09% and GBP/USD is up 0.06%.

North American session

USD/JPY, after touching 153 corrected down to near 152.60. EUR/USD had little direction ending little changed around 1.0780. GBP/USD however came under pressure falling to near 1.29 before a modest correction, as EUR/GBP rose to .8340 from .8310. US existing home sales were weaker than expected with a 1.0% fall to 3.84m while the Fed’s Beige Book saw inflation continuing to moderate.

The main news of the day was a largely as expected 50bps easing from the Bank of Canada. USD/CAD rose as far as 1.3863 but ended little changed near 1.3840. AUD/CAD was weaker near .9175 as AUD/USD fell to .6630 from .6650.