The economic calendar is light today and focus would be on speeches of US Treasury secretary, Jack Lew, and the New York Fed president William Dudley. Looking ahead, two central banks will meet this week. BoC and BoE are both expected to keep policies unchanged and might provide little inspirations to the markets.
Currencies: the hottest topic is the relentless strength of the JPY with not much stopping the course of it with the BoJ meeting only coming up at the end of April. When Japan intervened in the FX markets in 2011, USD/JPY was trading below 80 and the coordinated intervention on 18 March that year came one week after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Stocks: Shares in Asia mixed on Monday. At the time of writing Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index has dropped -1.38% on JPY’s strength. Equities in China gained as PPI deflation moderated. China’s CSI 300 index has added +1.74% while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index has climbed +0.51% in the morning session. On Friday US stocks closed in the green.
Oil and GOLD: Oil comes to the front of both Forex and Commodities traders watch lists this week as the world’s major producers both within and outside OPEC come together in Doha, Qatar. The talks are a follow up talk on the current production freeze and encompass a wider range of non-OPEC nations. The discussion will be around how long the production freeze will last as well as whether the $50 per barrel price target for Oil can be reached. Oil rose in Asia to as high as $40.40 while Gold also climbed to $1252 after closing $1244 on Friday.
Leave A Comment