Asia Summary and Highlights 29 Feb

Asia Session

BOJ's Takata made a remark that momentum is rising in spring wage talks with many companies are offering higher-than-2023 wage hikes. He also highlights exit measures like abandoning yield curve control framework, ending negative rates, overshoot commitment. JPY rose as it is the first direct acknowledgment that achieving the 2% inflation target is becoming in sight and indirectly suggest a hike is imminent, at least bringing rates out of negative. USD/JPY dropped 0.58% to 149.81 on its mark with JGBs yield performing strongly.

Regional equities bounced strongly after opening lower with global equities in the green. After a slump on Wednesday, the Aussie is being supported by positive sentiment and broadly softer USD.  AUD/USD is trading 0.34% higher at 0.6517, NZD/USD also 0.09% higher at 0.6103 while USD/CAD slipped 0.03% with oil up twenty something cent. Elsewhere, EUR/USD is 0.04% lower and GBP/USD up 0.04%.

North American session

In a very quiet session the USD saw marginal losses, mainly versus the EUR, with EUR/USD peaking just below 1.0850. EUR/GBP also saw marginal gains. 

USD slippage may have been encouraged by US data, with Q4 GDP revised down to 3.2% from 3.3% and January’s advance goods trade deficit increasing to $90.2bn from $87.9bn. However the GDOP revision was more than fully due to inventories with domestic demand revised higher, as was the core PCE price index, to 2.1% from 2.0%. Fed speakers Collins, Bostic and Williams all suggested rates were likely to fall later this year but the Fed needed to see more data before acting.