The MSCI emerging market currency index, meanwhile, fell 0.3% on Thursday – not a particularly big move on the face of it but, remarkably, its biggest decline in four months. With the dollar, yields and U.S. recession worries all rising, emerging market assets will be under pressure on Friday.
That’s the backdrop to Asia’s trading day, where the spotlight will fall on Japanese inflation figures and Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda’s monetary policy testimony to lawmakers.
It will mark Ueda’s first public comments since the central bank last month raised interest rates by a higher-than-expected 25 basis points. That, coupled with his hawkish post-decision press conference, helped stoke volatility in Japanese markets that ended up with a sharp unwind of yen carry trades and the Nikkei 225 index’s biggest one-day fall since 1987.
The Nikkei has recovered all those losses and more, closing on Thursday at a three-week high. That’s all the more impressive considering the yen has held onto to almost all its gains, and is still up more than 10% in the last six weeks.
Official figures are expected to show that annual core inflation ticked up in July to 2.7% from 2.6% on June. That would put inflation above the BOJ’s 2% target for the 28th straight month, supporting BOJ officials’ view that they should continue the move away from decades of ultra-easy policy.
