Asia Summary and Highlights 16 July

Asia Session

It is a relatively quiet session after the market digest Trump's assassination attempt over the weekend. USD is trading broadly higher, especially against JPY and the antipodeans. Both the U.S. Treasury and JGB yields are treading lower. USD/JPY is trading 0.48% higher at 158.71 with the return of verbal intervention.

The antipodeans are also bearing the blunt of USD. Regional sentiment in China and Hong Kong are soft while U.S. three major equity indexes and the Nikkei are positive. AUD/USD slipped 0.37% to 0.6734 and NZD/USD is down 0.43% to 0.6049 while USD/CAD rose 0.08%. Else, EUR/USD is down 0.07% and GBP/USD is down 0.09%.

North American session

The USD saw a brief dip as Fed’s Powell stated that recent data gave greater confidence that inflation was falling though he declined to give a signal for any particular meeting and the USD ended marginally firmer.EUR/USD slipped to touch marginally below 1.09 while GBP/USD found sellers below 1.30. USD/JPY was stable near 158 apart from a brief dip on Powell’s comments. The commodity currencies saw some slippage as early equity gains faded, but came off their lows as equities stablized.

Early in the session Fed’s Goolsbee suggested softer inflation data was bringing rate cuts closer, while the Empire State manufacturing survey was marginally weaker at -6.6 from -6.0. The Bank of Canada’s Q2 business outlook survey was a little softer, but not changed much from its Q1 findings. Late in the session Trump chose populist Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate.