After
Thursday’s wild moves, especially in yen, major FX in Asia took a
bit of a breather. USD/JPY fell back under 142.00 from highs above
142.50 early in the piece. It was a holiday in Japan today and why
that doesn’t guarantee a quiet session its what we got today.
Japan’s Ministry of Finance would have been on guard for a
resurgent USD/JPY but it has not eventuated and so we have not seen
any official jawboning nor intervention during the session here.

Elsewhere
across major FX there has been a minor US dollar bid pretty much
across the board. Eur, AUD, GBP, NZD are all a few points lower but
none are troubling technical levels within the tight ranges we have
had.

Regional
equities have dropped, taking their lead from a lower Wall Street on
Thursday.

Oil
and gold are a touch softer also.

Data
releases were very much lower tier and news flow was light.

On
the central bank front the only point of note was a yet again weaker
mid-rate for the onshore yuan from the People’s Bank of China. The
Reuters estimate was above 7 but this was not realised, the PBoC
holding USD/CNY under that big round number psychological level at
the fixing. Market trading of USD/CNY and USD/CNH is above 7
regardless.