Forex Market Update: EUR, GBP and JPY Price Action Largely Contained Ahead Of Upcomin

Price action on the USD and currencies was range-bound for most of the Asian session, though a slight lift to JPY crosses and currencies emerged late in the session in response to a surge in Asian stock markets with shares in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea rallying 3-4%. DJIA futures were up 82 pts. Seen fostering a slight positive boost for the market as well was the NY Times report that all U.S. banks are set to pass their stress tests and are surprisingly healthy though some will need more funds. USD-JPY, which opened around 99.75, rallied briefly to 100.00 on fixing demand rumors with the actual flows failing to materialize, but made another push above 100.00 on the strong gains in stocks in the afternoon. EUR-USD opened in Tokyo around 1.3250 and pivoted closely 1.3250 much of the session before making slight gains to 1.3275 on the stock performance. AUD-USD which slumped after the worse-than-expected jobs data, bounced back to 0.7100 due to a large number of upcoming option expiries but allied to 0.7116 as the stock performance. Oil also gained a $1, rising over $50.00 on the equity market performance. However, currency prices remain within recent ranges with activity expected to be subdued due to the coming holidays.