ForexLive Asia FX news wrap: RBA and PBoC activity today

Previous session:

Forexlive Americas FX news wrap: Zelensky and Bullard send markets on a ride

Asia:

The focus on Eastern Europe
continued during the session here today although new news out of the
region was sparse given the timezone. The US State Department did
issue advice that US citizens should leave Belarus (see bullets
above).

On
the central bank front we had:

1.
Bank of Japan Governor Kuroda spoke. In a nutshell he said there is
no reason to change the current level of loose monetary policy. He
defended the BOJ activity in the JGB market yesterday (the Bank
offered to buy 10 year bonds in order to reduce the yield, again see
bullets for more). Kuroda also indicated he would defend the Bank’s
policy to other G20 members, including the side-effect of a weaker
yen.

2.
The Reserve Bank of Australia released its minutes of the February
meeting. Long story short on this (see bullets above again for more)
is that the Bank noted that progress is being made towards
targets but mentioned, again, its waiting on wage growth
acceleration. The minutes have largely been made a little stale by
the subsequent SoMP (released Friday Feb. 4) and Governor Lowe’s
testimony in parliament (on Friday Feb. 11). As a side note the CBA
dragged forward its expectation for the lift-off RBA rate hike to
June ‘22 from August.

From
China today the People’s Bank of China issued a one year medium
term lending facility (MLF) for 300bn yuan. A 200 bn MLF will mature
this coming Friday (18^th). The rate on today’s MLF was
an unchanged 2.85%. There had been some speculation of a cut (the
consensus view was for unchanged though). Looking ahead its likely
the 1 and 5 year loan prime rates (LPR) to be set on the 20^th
will also remain unchanged given the steady MLF rate.

Across
major FX it was small range session. It was a mixed bag against the USD. EUR and NZD, GBP also are a few points higher. AUD/USD is more or less unchanged on the session after minor moves. USD/JPY and USD/CHF are also little changed after their minor gyrations.

Gold has popped higher again during the session. Investor demand persists with Russia-Ukraine concerns prompting buyers into the metal as a store of value. This despite growing expectations of US Federal Reserve rates hikes imminent in the months ahead.