ForexLive Asia-Pacific FX news wrap: Minor bout of USD softness | Forexlive

The
USD saw a pretty much across-the-board bout of weakness. EUR, AUD,
GBP, CAD, even yen all gained albeit in small ranges. The move came
after Chinese economic data for February were announced. These were a
little mixed compared to expectations but did come in better than
previous.

NZD/USD
had joined in the bounce but lost bids on the news that S&P said
the country’s ratings could be pressured by NZ’s poor external
imbalance. Earlier in the session the Q4 current account was
published, much worse than expected.

The
People’s Bank of China announced a one-year injection of funds via
its regular Medium-term Lending Facility (MLF) operation. The rate
was unchanged from the February MLF injection and is a heads up to an
expected unchanged rate on one- and five-year Loan Prime Rates
that’ll be set on March 20.

On
the crypto front, Coinbase announced that says customers in Singapore
can now transfer funds to and from their Coinbase accounts using any
bank in Singapore. Standard Chartered will facilitate the transfers.

We
had the private survey of oil inventory after the US close. Also in
the news on oil were remarks from Saudi Arabia’s energy minister
Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman vowing to keep the cartel’s oil output
cuts in place until the end of this year. Oil recovered some ground
after its Tuesday slump.

Banking
related stocks were generally firmer across the region as contagion
fears from the US bank collapses receded.

Asian
equity markets: