During
the week we’ve been seeing supportive policy and supportive
comments out of China:
- the
People’s Bank of China injected 800m+ yuan in open market
operations - China’s
Premier Li Qiang said the economy was on the improve, March is even
better than in January and February
Today
we had
- PMIs remaining solidly in expansion (see bullets above)
- And
promises of further economic support from the Vice Finance Minister (see bullets above)
China’s
yuan moved lower up until Thursday but today jumped to a new high for
the week. Albeit helped along by flows back out of USD.
Also
in the news today were plenty of data from Japan. Retail sales and
industrial output coming in better than expectations, while Tokyo CPI
was slightly above expectations on all three measures (headline,
core, and core-cor, see bullets above). The unemployment rate ticked
up but from, and to, a still very low level.
From
Australia we had reports of construction sector firms entering
liquidation with reasons cited including rising input costs, supply
chain delays, labour shortages, and a drop in demand for new homes in
2023. Rapidly rising interest rates are also playing a role, of
course.
In
geo-politics the headline was that the Turkish parliament ratified
Finland’s membership of NATO. This clears the way for the country to
join the alliance. Sweden’s pending membership is not clear yet.
In
local US politics, former President Trump will be indicted. He
has indicated, through
his lawyers,
he’ll be turning
himself in on
April 4 in
New York.
Apart
from the yuan USD/JPY was a mover, scaling as high as over 133.40
before retracing back below 133.00. Its not far below as I post. EUR,
AUD, NZD, GBP, CAD have all climbed against the USD with varying
degrees of retracement. Adding small to their Thursday gains.
Asian
equity markets:
-
Japan’s
Nikkei 225 +0.82% -
China’s
Shanghai Composite +0.29% -
Hong
Kong’s Hang Seng +1.85% -
South
Korea’s KOSPI +1.05% -
Australia’s
S&P/ASX 200 +0.71%
