US Senator Schumer says deal reached to avert shutdown
Forex news for Asia trading on
Thursday
30
September 2021
The US Senate will vote Thursday
(local time) on a stopgap bill to keep the government funded through
to December 3. Senate Leader Schumer has said he has an agreement to
get the bill passed. If
so it’d then head to the US
House of Representatives
where it should pass, and
then, again if so, to US President Biden for signing.
The
news added some positive sentiment to the session with currencies
generally higher against the USD. Moves were not large, barely
denting the
massive rise for the USD Wednesday time – just a small retrace is
all. Shut down may very
well be avoided but Biden’s legislative agenda is still unresolved.
In
the data front we had Japanese industrial production data. This
showed a bigger slump than was expected m/m, for
the second consecutive month.
The Japanese government revised its IP assessment, saying output is
stalling. The
semiconductor chip shortage continues to weigh, particularly
impacting auto production.
A
little later we had the first of the manufacturing PMIs from China
for September. The Manufacturing PMI slipped into contraction for the
first time since the darkest days for Chinese industry back in
February 2020. The non-manufacturing PMI did improve though. In
addition to chip shortages the NBS pointed to both demand and supply
pressures including surging energy pricing and higher prices for
other inputs.
Forty-five
minutes after the official manufacturing PMI the privately surveyed
Caixin-Markit manufacturing PMI for September was published. This
came in at a small, and very
welcome, expansion after
the August contraction reading (see bullets above).
On
the coronavirus front Australian state of Victoria recorded a 50%
rise in new cases in one day, to 1400+ and a new high record for the
state (by far). So far the State’s government has not indicated any
delay to reopening plans, vaccinations are the key. A further
worsening of the outbreak from here will increase the probability of
delays to reopening due to concerns over overwhelming the hospital
system.
BTC rose for a solid gain:
