Rates as of 0500 GMT
Market Recap
Its hard to classify todays moves as riskon or riskoff or risky or whatever. The growthsensitive AUD was the 1 loser but the safehaven CHF was the 2. I think probably the main impetus was just positioncutting ahead of the long holiday weekend both Friday and Monday are holidays in many centers.
AUD had been declining ever since shortly after the US market opened Wednesday. It took a sudden lurch down at 0545 GMT this morning for no apparent reason. There were several economic indicators out that were negative for the Australian economy, but they were all released well before that. I can only assume that people were closing out their positions ahead of the long weekend and some stops were triggered.
Australias trade surplus was lower than expected as exports fell instead of rising as expected 1.3 mom vs 1.5 expected and imports rose faster than expected 5.2 mom vs 3.6 expected.
And Australian home loans fell instead of rising as expected and job vacancies rose less than expected too. Having said that, those two are relatively lowimpact indicators; meanwhile, the closely watched retail sales were revised up.
Also the Caixin China manufacturing purchasing managers index PMI missed estimates completely it fell to 50.6 from 50.9 instead of rising to 51.4 as expected.
CAD was the secondbestperforming currency but it has turned around and started weakening this morning after a Canadian news service reported that the province of…