Asia Summary and Highlights 27 Mar

Asia Session

USD/JPY reached 151.97 earlier in the session on Wednesday. It is a level last seen in 1990 and sparked further verbal escalation from Suzuki, twice in the same session. It seems to suggest any further spike maybe met with intervention and see a modest retreat from the session top as U.S. Treasury Yields perform individually while 10yr JGB yield slips. After reaching 151.97, USD/JPY retreated to 151.64 currently to be 0.06% higher for the session. 

The latest February monthly Australian CPI shows a slight miss of estimate at 3.4% but remains the same as January CPI. The inflation figure remains above RBA's target upper range at 3% and would see the central bank keep rates unchanged. The RBA will remain data dependent in the coming months but we are not seeing them to cut at the first light of CPI below 3%. AUD/USD is trading 0.1% lower at 0.6527 as regional sentiment is soft in China and Hong Kong while Japan and U.S. equity indexes are in the green. NZD/USD is 0.08% lower at 0.5999 while USD/CAD rose 0.06% to 1.3592 as oil down a few cents. Else, EUR/USD is down 0.02% and GBP/USD is down 0.1%.

North American session

The USD saw modest gains across the board in North America with USD/JPY rising to 151.50 and EUR/USD falling to 1.0835. AUD/USD erased its outperforming European gains.

While February durable goods orders with a 1.4% rise were slightly stronger than expected the ex-transport gain of 0.5% was modest and the story was more of risk positive moves rather than a reaction to data. Later March consumer confidence came in a little softer than expected at 104.7, little changed from 104.8 in February though that number was revised down from 106.7.