Asia FX Summary: EURUSD and GBPUSD Consolidated in Holiday-Thinned Asian Trading

Consolidation was the theme in Asia with many of the key markets, Hong Kong and Singapore, closed for holidays and with many European markets closed later in the day. The approaching Golden Week holiday in Japan also sapped trading interest for the session. USD-JPY cleared stops above 99.00 concurrent with the Tokyo fix to trade to 99.17 with stop-loss buying reported on EUR-JPY at the same time as the cross rallied to 131.50. But position-squaring in the afternoon took USD-JPY down to lows of 98.75 while EUR-JPY retreated to 130.84 before stabilizing. Little interest was seen in either EUR-USD or GBP-USD with EUR-USD holding a tight range of 1.3243-74 after the Tokyo open and with GBP-USD pivoting either side of 1.4800, both currencies after the retreat from recent highs on Thursday. Those Asian stock markets that were open were mixed with Australian stocks lower and the Nikkei higher. Gold, oil and copper prices all eased in the futures market. Japanese data continued to reflect the economic slowdown with unemployment jumping to 4.8% from 4.4% and a four-and-a-half year high.