Europe Summary and Highlights 16 Jan
The USD edged a little lower through a largely newsless European morning, with the JPY the best performer of the majors.
European morning session
The USD edged a little lower through a largely newsless European morning, with the JPY the best performer of the majors. USD/JPY tested 158 before settling around 30 pips lower at 158.10. The riskier currencies made more modest gain of 0.1% or less, with EUR/USD gaining just around 5 pips to 1.1615.
The best performer of the morning was the NOK, with EUR/NOK dropping 4 figures to 11.71, though with no obvious trigger beyond some modest gains in the oil price.
Asia session
Japan’s Finance Minister Katayama continue with her tough talk on intervention. This time she said she won’t exclude any options when asked about the possibility of U.S.–Japan joint intervention. To be fair, a joint U.S.-Japan intervention is the one needed to really put a lid on JPY speculation. However, such is also much more complicated than just BoJ intervening. With JPY's losses being stalled for now, such will likely remain to be talk. USD/JPY is trading 0.24% lower at 158.22 with JGB outperform U.S. Treasury yields.
U.S. major equity indexes are outperforming their regional peers. China has begun forcing servers out of exchange data centre in Shanghai and Guangzhou, an act seems to be targeting high frequency trading firms. AUD/USD is trading 0.08% higher at 0.6704, NZD/USD is trading 0.26% higher at 0.5757 while USD/CAD slips 0.05%. Else, EUR/USD is up 0.02% and GBP/USD is up 0.05%.