ForexLive Asia FX news wrap: Another hurricane hits the US Gulf

Forex news for Asia trading on
Tuesday
14th
September 2021  

With
US oil still struggling to recover from the damage done by Hurricane
Ida, Tropical Storm Nicholas has been upgraded (just prior to me
posting this wrap) to Hurricane Nicholas. Its expected to make
landfall on the Texas coast imminently. Oil has inched a little
higher on the session here in Asia but not by much.

Data
flow today was focused on Australian business confidence and
conditions (for August) via the National Australia Bank survey. The
survey showed an improvement from a poor set of results in July. Not
a lot of improvement but at least some (see bullets above).

Also
from Australia today, Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Lowe gave a
speech. Lowe was blunt on the cash rate ahead, he:

• reiterated
  that the cash rate is unlikely to rise before 2024 given sluggish
  wage growth

and said

• its
  “difficult to understand” why markets are pricing in hikes
  for 2022 and 2023

This
is not new from Lowe, but it is blunter and more forthright than
usual. If he was a politician he might have said “read my lips”
… and maybe he’d be telling the truth! There
is more from Lowe in the posts on his speech and the following Q&A
in the bullets above.

FX
movement was subdued, even AUD did not do too much despite the data
and Lowe. It topped out just above 0.7370 and is currently circa
0.7356 0.7350 (dropping a little more as I proof-read). 

EUR/USD,
GBP/USD, USD/JPY are all up a few tics with not much news flow at
all. NZD/USD is net a few tics down on the day. EUR/JPY gained.

Regional
equities: Japan’s Nikkei rose again while China’s Shanghai Composite and HK’s Hang Seng are barely net changed. 

As I slot in the AUD chart its dribbling lower after Lowe’s speech and comments: