Forex news for Asia trading
for Thursday
4
March 2021
the
Australian dollar was a mover (relatively speaking) in majopr FS
during the session here today, helped along by a trade balance data
release (for January) that came in at +10bn vs. +6.8bn expected (see
bullets above for more detail in the numbers) and the
largest trade surplus ever
in
the history of the series. Resource
exports booming are a key underpinning of the result (although a miss
on imports helped). AUD/USD is up 35 or so points from its session
lows. At the same time as the trade data were retail sales (final,
January) that were not as impressive but still +10%-odd y/y.
Otherwise
across the major pairs it was not so active. EUR/USD and GBP/USD are
down a little while USD/JPY is higher with USD/CHF fairly stable.
There
was plenty of action in regional stocks though. Indices across Asia
fell, taking their cue from falls in the US on Wednesday but Japan
and China really kicked on lower. As I update
- the
Nikkei is down 1.9% (approx) - HK’s
Hang Seng is -2.5% - China’s
CSI 300 was down circa 3% at one stage
Tech
stocks are seeing the biggest bleeding.
Coming up from China later on Thursday, there will be a press
conference at 9:40 pm Thursday Beijing time (which is 1340 GMT). This is to outline the major subjects of discussion and deliberation at the annual
session of China’s parliament that begins Friday.