Forex Today: sees pre-Christmas tight ranges in Asia, focus on UK and US GDP

Forex today witnessed a quiet affair in Asia this Friday, with most majors sticking to tight trading ranges amid risk-off trades in the Asian equity markets and persisting US shutdown fears. The US dollar staged a comeback across its main competitors amid an uptick in Treasury yields. Among the Asia-pac currencies, the USD/JPY pair attempted a bounce from 111.10 region while the Antipodeans traded modestly flat, in absence of fresh catalysts.

On the commodities front, both crude benchmarks rebounded nearly 1% on reports that the OPEC is planning deeper output cuts. Meanwhile, Gold prices on Comex extended its retreat from six-month tops of 1270.20 heading towards the US macro releases due later in the NA session.

Main Topics in Asia

UK consumer confidence falls to its lowest level since July 2013

US House passes bill to fund federal agencies through Feb. 8, provides $5bn for Trump's wall

Japan’s MOF: Cabinet approves budget spending of JPY 101.4564 trln in FY 2019/20

China’s ForeignMin urges the US to correct its "wrong behavior"

Gold off half-yearly tops, around $ 1265 ahead of US data

Asian stocks are in a sea of red ahead of Christmas

Japan’s Aso: Extra budget Includes measures to support sales tax hike planned for Oct 2019

Brent oil recovers from 15-month lows on reports OPEC is planning deeper output cuts

Key Focus Ahead

Friday’s EUR macro calendar sees a slew of second-liner data releases, kicking-off with the German Gfk consumer confidence survey for January at 0700 GMT. At 0930 GMT, the UK final GDP revision for the third quarter will be reported alongside the Q3 current account and public sector net borrowings figures.

Ahead of the US open, the BOE quarterly bulletin will be published, followed by the US final Q3 GDP and durable orders data release at 1330 GMT. We have the Canadian GDP and retail sales reports released parallely. Next of note remains the US core PCE price index, UoM consumer sentiment and Eurozone Consumer confidence data, all of which due to be released at 1500 GMT. Later on Friday, the US Bakers Hughes oil rigs count data will be reported at 1800 GMT.

EUR/USD takes out key hurdle ahead of US GDP

EUR/USD, however, may find it hard to scale the 100-day EMA of 1.1486 if the US data better estimates and the political tensions in Washington subside.

GBP/USD: Bears taking back charge, eyes 1.2625 ahead of UK data

GBP/USD witnessed good two-way trading in Asia this Friday, now heading back towards the NY lows near 1.2625, as we progress towards the European opening bells.

US Durable Goods and GDP Preview: Spending returns to trend, GDP steady

The US Census will release its November Report on Durable Goods-Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories and Orders on Friday December 21st at 8:30 am EST, 13:30 GMT.  

RBNZ seen on hold through to Q3 of 2019 – Reuters poll

The latest Reuters poll of economists offers the view on the direction of Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) policy for the next year.