ForexLive Asia FX news wrap: Cable hits a 2020 high

Forex news for Asia trading Wednesday 19 August 2020

• China says services trade in a severe and complex situation in H2, global demand falters
• Its official, Biden is the Democrat Party nomination for the 2020 US Presidential election
• Australian PM says there is no dumping of Australian wine on China
• ANZ on the gold fall - ''appears to have been a short lived bout of profit taking"
• Reminder - Goldman Sachs end of year S&P500 target is 3600
• Oil - heads up for the OPEC+ JMMC meeting today, Wednesday 19 August 2020
• NZ PM Ardern says not seeing a surge in community cases of coronavirus
• PBOC sets USD/ CNY reference rate for today at 6.9168 (vs. yesterday at 6.9325)
• FX option expiries for Wednesday August 19 at the 10am NY cut
• Hong Kong exchange has cancelled morning trade due to the typhoon
• UBS says gold will shake off its drop, heading to $2,300
• China, US agree to allow air carriers to double flights between the two countries
• Australia - Westpac leading indicator for July +0.05% m/m (prior +0.44%)
• BNZ forecast the RBNZ will cut to a negative cash rate in April 2021
• Japan Core Machinery Orders for June: -7.6% m/m (expected 2.0%)
• Japan trade balance for July Y +11.6bn (expected Y -86.5bn)
• A second Indonesian earthquake - tsunami alert warning issued this time
• Australian state of Victoria reports 216 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases
• Australians will receive a free coronavirus vaccine dose (conditions apply)
• NZ PPI for Q2, input prices and output prices both fall
• Indonesia - Magnitude 6.8 earthquake
• California have declared a state of emergency due to wildfires, weather
• Federal Reserve Jackson Hole summit is coming up - USD preview
• ICYMI - Yonhap on North Korea's up to 60 nuclear weapons & world's third-largest stockpile of chemical weapons
• The negatives for the NZD (in summary) … and yet here it is at 0.66
• Heads up for an RBNZ speaker on Thursday
• Trump says he postponed talks with China, does not want to speak with China now
• Trade ideas thread - Wednesday 19 August 2020
• US state dept asks colleges, universities to divest Chinese holdings
• Brexit talks look set to hit another roadblock, this time over truck access to the EU
• Private oil survey data shows draw in headline crude oil inventory

The "long story short" summary of major FX in Asia for today is that there is little net change, but that does gloss over a few, albeit minor, moves.

USD/JPY dropped towards 105.10 in a bout of USD weakness in morning trade but that whole drop has been gained back and, depending on your start point (mine is 4pm NY) its a touch higher for the session now, to highs above 105.50

EUR/USD moved up during that USD weakness to just above 1.1950 and then it too retraced. There was little news nor data to prompt the moves.

AUD/USD and NZD/USD have tracked similar patterns. Gold is a few dollars weaker (again, small move).

Notably, cable popped to 1.3265 before moving back to, also, barely changed on the session. I say notably as the high today was a fresh high for the year so far.

Data for the session showed a huge drop in both exports from, and imports to, Japan in July. Both collapsed, just not quite as disastrously as expected. The 'capex indicating' machinery orders data for June was just as dismal, admittedly this is a volatile data set though.

Hong Kong stock and derivative exhanges were closed for the morning session due to typhoon weather.

In politics, the US Democratic National Convention voted to officially nominate Joe Biden as the party's presidential candidate.

You'll have to look closely but GBP/USD surpassed its 2020 high today, set in the first January session: