China historic rate cut, read from the bottom up for the chronology: The Peopleâs Bank of China cut its 5-year Loan Prime Rate by 25bp, the most eve
China historic rate cut, read from the bottom up for the chronology:
The
Peopleâs Bank of China cut its 5-year Loan Prime Rate by 25bp, the
most ever, today. The 5-year was cut to 3.95% from 4.20%. The 1-year
was left unchanged at 4.35%.
The
5-year is a benchmark for mortgage rates in China and a big part of
the reasoning behind the PBoC cut
was support for the deeply troubled property sector.
Chinese
equity markets, both on the mainland and Hong Kong are mixed to down.
As I post the Shanghai Composite is up something like 0.1% while the
CSI 300 is negative by a similar tiny percentage. Hong Kongâs Hang
Seng is a touch lower also.
Other:
From
the Reserve Bank of Australia today we had February meeting minutes.
Since the meeting weâve had a press conference from Reserve Bank of
Australia Governor Bullock, the latest Statement on Monetary Policy
(SoMP), a shockingly awful employment report, and Reserve Bank of
Australia Governor Bullock speaking twice in parliament. The minutes
were thus dated and stale and did not add new information. There were
pro forma comments in it such as the retention of optionality on
policy with the Board saying its âappropriate not to rule out
another rise in ratesâ.
There
was little else in the news of much impact at all.
The
US dollar gained a few points on the session. EUR/USD, AUD/USD,
NZD/USD, GBP/USD while USD/CAD and USD/CHF rose. USD/JPY ticked above
150.35 and its not much lower as I post. We had the usual ineffective
sort of comments intended to support the yen from Japanâs finance
minister Suzuki. Perhaps the counterfactual is USD/JPY would have
risen more without his jawboning, but weâll never know.
USD/CNH
is down a little on the session:
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