U.S. Dollar Support By Comments From China's Vice Foreign Minister, FX Volatility Rem

Asia FX Summary (July 2nd) The dollar gained ground in Asian trading, aided by comments from China’s Vice Foreign Minister stating that the USD is the main global reserve currency, and that he has not heard of the China request for a reserve currency debate. EUR-USD, which had been capped at 1.4201 in NY on Wednesday, had opened in Tokyo around 1.4150 before falling to 1.4101 on the comments from China. Similarly, Cable, which was capped around 1.6500 in Asian trading, dropped to 1.6452. USD-JPY was initially supported by fixing demand at morning lows of 96.38 and rallied to highs of 96.72 on China’s comments. But, despite slight activity on China’s comments, traders reported that overall volume was muted as the market waits for the ECB rate decision and later, the U.S. jobs data. Asian stock markets were mixed though Hong Kong and Shanghai stocks still found support from the China PMI data on Wednesday. U.S. Treasury yields were little changed from NY levels. NYMEX crude was heavy, trading under $70/brl, while gold pared some of the gains made on Wednesday as well.