ForexLive Asia FX news wrap: Awaiting the next headline!

The lead in to the Asia session:

Forexlive Americas FX news wrap: Biden bans Russian oil; Russia to cut exports

Reserve Bank of Australia
Governor Lowe spoke today, edging less dovish/more hawkish (see
bullets above). Deputy Governor Debelle speaks later today.

A
senior Bank of Japan official today said he sees inflation in the
country accelerating. He cited both rising input and energy prices.
Given energy prices are normally stripped out of ‘core’ CPI
measures its not clear it’d rise to the BOJ’s 2% target. USD/JPY
traded up on the session, only by 30 or so points, so perhaps this
interpretation is more than just mine.

Speaking
of inflation, China’s February CPI and PPI were released today. The
headline CPI remained
at
0.9% y/y and ‘core at 1.1% (dropping from
1.2% the previous 3 months in a row). Notably, the m/m headline
change was a more significant 0.6%. The PPI backed off a little, from
9.1% in January to a still-high 8.8% in February. Price rises as a
result of
Russia’s

war on Ukraine will not flow through until next month, of course.

Oil
prices ticked higher during the session, not in a runaway move as
we’d seen earlier in the week, a much more subdued session for it
today. In the news was Venezuela releasing two US hostages – a very
welcome development and likely indicative of the progress made in
US-Venezuela negotiations to get the country’s oil back to market.
The US has stipulated that as a precondition for this it’d want some
shipments of oil directly to the US. Given the pressure’s on Biden
from gas prices this makes sense.

The
main focus, of course, is still Ukraine. In today’s news we had
(see bullets above for more on all of these) :

• an
  offer from Poland of its MiG fighter jets to Ukraine
• further
  withdrawal from Russia of multinational corporations
• Russia’s
  central bank placing a limit on FX withdrawals
• the
  US sending two Patriot missile batteries to Poland

As
already mentioned, USD/JPY traded a little higher on the session.
Major FX movement away from yen was much more limited, lacklustre
ranges prevailing.

Regional
equities steadied. Japan (Nikkei225) and China (CSI300) traded a
little higher.

USD/JPY: