The overnight gains for AUD/USD and NZD/USD continued during the Asian morning, albeit on a small scale. Each gained a few points only.

USD/JPY rose from just over 115.05 to hit a high above 115.40. The initial yen weakness was associated with the report that SoftBank’s sale of Arm to Nvidia has fallen through. The crumbling of the proposed deal was being talked about in prior weeks, it was facing stern regulator resistance across multiple jurisdictions, but financial media confirmation reports early in the session here triggered some yen sales.

EUR/USD meanwhile has given back its (tiny) early pop but the range is not going to trouble record keepers.

Cable is hardly net changed for the session while USD/CAD eked out a few points higher only.

On the data agenda today the focus was Australian business confidence and conditions for January (the monthly National Australia Bank Business Survey). Confidence recovered somewhat from its collapse in December while the more objective Conditions indicator softened a little. The drop in conditions was pretty much shrugged off, expectations are there will be improvement ahead as Australia continues to bounce out of the Omicron wave. Of interest also from Australia was an ex-RBA policy board member alerting to the possibility of four rapid RBA rate hikes later in 2022. More on all of this in the bullets above.


USD/JPY higher:

usdyen chart 08 February 2022