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ForexLive Asia-Pacific FX news wrap: Round trip for yen and risk

The
yen initially continued to strengthen during the session, with
USD/JPY dropping to lows just under 146.60. The US 2 year yield hit
its lowest since October last year, while on the yen side JGB yields
held firm.

From
Japan we had plenty of data and comments:

  • January
    household spending came in at +0.8% y/y, a bit, big miss on estimates
    of +3.6%
  • Q4
    GDP was revised a little lower to +2.2%, from the preliminary
    blockbuster +2.8%
  • Japan
    Economy Minister Akazawa says FX should move stably, reflecting
    fundamentals
  • Japan’s
    Finance Minister Kato said FX developments impact people’s lives

The
upshot of all this is that after its early fall USD/JPY retraced back to briefly touch above 147.20. As I post its back straddling 147.00.

The
US recession narrative took further hold, sending US equity indexes
down once trade reopened on Globex. Like USD/JPY, we have had some
recovery retrace.

EUR/USD
had small gyrations only, net higher on the session. Italy is
proposing a European guarantee scheme aimed at unlocking up to €200
billion. More fiscal stimulus.

AUD,
CAD, NZD were all a littler more active, dipping early before also
retracing.

From
Australia today we had business confidence falling back back into
negative territory in February. The survey also contains a measure of
business conditions, which tends to be a more objective than the
sentiment driven confidence measure. Conditions improved slightly
higher.

While
analyst notes from banks come and go, the one from Citi (via a Bloomberg report) today drew
some attention. The bank downgraded US equities to neutral, while
boosting Chinese equities to overweight. On the day the news of the
note pretty much bottom-ticked US equity indices.

This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at www.forexlive.com.

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