Reuters: US Dollar Report: FOREX-Dollar edges down versus yen, Aussie dollar slumps after China GDP

Reuters: US Dollar Report Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

FOREX-Dollar edges down versus yen, Aussie dollar slumps after China GDP Apr 15th 2013, 03:43 Sun Apr 14, 2013 11:43pm EDT * Warnings from U.S. to have limited effect on yen - analyst * Disappointing Chinese growth leaves Kiwi, Aussie weak * Hard to take positions on North Korean threat - analyst By Sophie Knight and Lisa Twaronite TOKYO, April 15 (Reuters) - The dollar moved further away from last week's four-year high against the yen on Monday after the United States said it would watch Japan to ensure its policies were not aimed at weakening its currency. Commodity currencies also took a kicking after data showed the pace of Chinese growth stumbled in the first three months of the year, undershooting expectations.. The Aussie dollar slipped 0.6 percent to $1.0439 as industrial output in China, Australia's biggest export market, also disappointed. That took it further from a three-month high of $1.0583 marked on Thursday. The Kiwi dollar lost 1.2 percent to $0.8486, stopping short of support at $0.8480, the 38.2 percent Fibonacci retracement of its March to April rally, above another level of support at $0.8449. With the yen firming across the board, the dollar pared its earlier gains against the Japanese currency, sagging 0.2 percent to 98.15 yen, well shy of a four-year peak of 99.95 yen struck on trading platform EBS on Thursday, but above Friday's low of 98.08 yen. On Friday, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a semi-annual report on currency practices on major trading partners that it would press Japan to adhere to the commitment it made in February as a member of the Group of Seven and Group of 20 nations to let the market determine exchange rates. However, many analysts are betting that the yen's slide will resume, in light of the Bank of Japan's radical monetary policy overhaul that will pump about $1.4 trillion into the economy in less than two years, although investors may be unwilling to move before a two-day G20 meeting beginning on Thursday. "It wasn't a direct criticism of Japanese policies themselves, it was just a reiteration of what we'd had before from the G7 and G20 statements: you have to use domestic instruments for domestic goals," said Bill Diviney, currency strategist at Barclays in Tokyo. "I think the (yen buying) is just a kneejerk reaction to the headlines and I don't think the impact will last to be honest. At the same time we also had some quite weak U.S. data so sentiment was not very positive for dollar-yen." On Friday, data showed that U.S. retail sales fell 0.4 percent in March, suggesting the economy may have faltered at the end of the first quarter. Strategists and market participants say the pace of the dollar's upward progress against the yen will largely be determined by whether the BOJ's massive asset-buying prompts Japanese investors to increase their overseas investments, and the extent to which those investments will be unhedged. Currency speculators decreased their bets in favour of the dollar in the latest week, according to data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission released on Friday. One potentially dollar-supportive factor is the escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula, and any negative developments on that front could prompt investors to buy back the U.S. currency. North Korea has threatened for weeks to attack the United States, South Korea and Japan since the United Nations imposed new sanctions on the rogue state in response to its latest nuclear arms test in February, fuelling speculation it might launch another missile. "There's not much people can do to prepare for an attack except wait to see the market reaction if it does do anything. There's a chance there might be no reaction, just like last year when it launched a missile that fell into the sea," said Junya Tanase, executive director of forex at JP Morgan. Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions