In the wake of Boxing day, the markets opened with a few gaps. Only in Japan, banks continued to work. Today, Wall Street is open, and Christmas is already over, but the volume is expected to be very low.
Forex traders have little information to listen to. In fact, all the data was already published in Japan earlier today. Household Spending y/y dropped by 0.5%, not as bad as expected. Tokyo Core CPI y/y was inline with expectations: it rose 0.8. These yearly figures aren’t major. Also the Unemployment Rate, that rose to 3.9%, less than 4.0% that was expected, didn’t have much impact.
The major figure of today in Japan was the Prelim Industrial Production m/m – this is a monthly figure – much more relevant. In addition, it fell quite badly – a whopping 8.1%. This was much worse than expecations, which stood at 6.8%.
Although the Prelim Industrial Production was bad, forex traders didn’t shake the Japanese Yen too much. The USD/JPY is currently at 90.45, trading in a narrow range.
Other than the news from Japan, the dollar weakened in the thin trading: EUR/USD is now at 1.4068, the GBP/USD is at 1.4750, the USD/CHF at 1.0764.
Have a great holiday weekend!
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