Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard spoke late on Monday afternoon in the US, saying he would not rule out a 75bp increase but the base case is not for more than 50bps at any meeting. There is more from him in the bullets above.

USD/JPY continued to surge during the session here. Finance Minister Suzuki was reported across the new wires with remarks intended to slow the rise, but to little impact (see bullets above).

News and data flow was fairly light:

  • Tangshan, in China, is the country’s largest steel producing city. It announced a lockdown in 5 districts.
  • The Reserve Bank of Australia April meeting minutes were released. Once again no sense of urgency for hiking rates came across. The Bank said it’d be further assessing data over coming months. Some analysts in the market suggested this was code for no rate hike ahead of the Australian election (May 21).
usdyen 19 April 2022 2