Europe Summary and Highlights 20 February

European morning session

The USD was slightly weaker against the riskier currencies in a quiet European morning session. EUR/USD gained around 10 pips to 1.0440 and there were similar USD losses against most other currencies, but USD/JPY was unchanged at 150.10.

There wasn’t any news of real note. German PPI data early in the session was weaker than expected, falling 0.1% m/m in January, but there was no other data.

Asia session

The Australia January unemployment rate rose to 4.1% y/y from 4% but was attributed to the historic strong participation rate of 67.3%. Headline employment change is a plus 44k with huge gains in full time post, suggesting the labor market remains solid. The RBA has begun cutting earlier this week and already acknowledged the upside risk in labor market, yet their concern on such led hotter inflation has dissipated on slower than expected wage growth. AUD/USD is up 0.31% at 0.6364, NZD/USD also 0.26% higher at 0.5719 while USD/CAD slips 0.1% as USD treads lower.

In Thursday’s Asia session, we are hearing repetitive remarks from Trump on his tariff and other policy. The policy uncertainty seems to be dragging risk lower with regional sentiment softer than U.S. major equity indexes. USD/JPY is fast approaching the 150 figure at 150.31 with U.S. Treasury Yields falling faster than JGB yields. Else, EUR/USD is up 0.09% and GBP/USD is up 0.1%.