SINGAPORE, Sept 12 — Asian stock markets nudged sideways today while the dollar took a breather, its recent gains chastened by resistance from central banks in China and Japan and by traders waiting on US inflation data to signal that interest rates may have peaked.
Both, however, remain near their weakest levels of the year and with the yuan at 7.3022 per dollar in offshore trade and the yen last a little off yesterday highs at 146.68 per dollar. “ is certainly constructive for yen longs. I refrain from getting too excited at this stage...where the actions are more of a medium-term issue — we won’t get the outcome of the spring wage negotiations until April 2024.”
“A lower-than-expected print may slow the US dollar’s rise while higher print could potentially un-nerve risk sentiments as it would reinforce market expectations for further rate hikes, and this could fuel dollar strength,” said OCBC strategist Christopher Wong. Overnight, the weaker dollar and upgrade on Tesla from analysts at Morgan Stanley helped US stock markets gain. Tesla rose 10 per cent. The S&P 500 rose 0.7 per cent.Elsewhere in currency trade, the Australian dollar was weighed by a further slip in consumer sentiment, which has been below the neutral 100 mark since March 2022 — the longest streak since a recession in the early 1990s.