Forex and Bitcoin news for Asia trading Monday 19 March 2018

Weekend:

USD/JPY had a pop (105.95-odd to 106.15-odd) on the BOJ 'Summary' (more in the bullets above on this; I highlighted the yen remarks from the Summary as an interesting development and its these that would seem to have given the US/yen a bit of a pop) but the move was soon retraced, and more. USD/JPY down to a fresh session low within 90 minutes or so. USD/JPY sales above 106 reported from global macro trading firms weighed on it, leveraged sellers eyeing weakness in stocks as a factor supporting yen (risk negative, yen positive ..... on the risk negative side of things this weighed on AUD again here today though the move was small only ... testing 0.7700).

(Note yen crosses lower also, and stop loss sellers took EUR/JPY under 130.00)

While a small range for the USD/JPY it was pretty much the best we had as a fairly typical Monday in Asia rolled out. EUR, GBP, CHF AUD and CAD all fell a few points against the USD. NZD/USD was a bit of an exception, but not by too much - its up a few points against the bigger dollar on the session.

While there was plenty of news flow over the weekend and on the week-opener here today, as you can see impacts were minor.

We await Europe, the UK and then US trade, although the economic calendar is light on there should be politics to come and perhaps some central bank speak.

Bitcoin and the crypto complex had a poor weekend, BTC price down around 1000USD since Friday, continuing the last week losses. Weekend comments from central bankers were, surprisingly, not too harsh at all (see bullets above).

Still to come: