Morning Update – 15/09/2016 – by Arjun Lakhanpal

Morning all.. Wall St finally closed down marginally after a very quiet session as yields were calmer but the Nikkei fell again last night finishing down 1.27% as the JPY strengthened into the close of NY and continued through the Asian session with USDJPY making a low of 101.95. For the 6th trading day in a row, Asian stocks fell, though volatility in markets is somewhat suppressed as we are still in “Mid-Autumn Festival” & therefore China, Taiwan and Korea remain closed. Two more signals for BOJ next week overnight, firstly Hamada, an advisor to Abe, suggested there is more room for easing, either through negative rates or expanded purchases, and secondly a forecast of a 10bp cut in rates – USDJPY initially tested below 102, but has since bounced to 102.35. In the antipodeans, Australia employment change was negative overnight, although the unemployment rate continued to decline to a 3 year low of 5.6%, driven by a lower participation rate (64.7% v 64.9% expected). And in New Zealand Q2 GDP was slightly below consensus at 0.9% vs 1.1% expected, but components ok. AUDUSD traded down to 0.7446 and NZDUSD down to 0.7258 but both subsequently bounced off those lows. SNB and BoE meetings today but no fireworks expected.. Also this morning we get Swedish unemployment, UK Retail Sales and EU CPI data. Good luck..