Deutsche Bank - Asia FX Meeting some resistance

Deutsche Bank - "USD/Asia crosses for CNY, KRW, SGD and PHP all traded to their year’s lows this week. Risk-sensitive currencies have outperformed, aided by the EUR/USD rally, rebound in the S&P on the back of US data surprises, and the Chinese data upturn which has alleviated hard-landing fears. The outlier remains the IDR, which has failed to make gains. We continue to think USD/Asia will grind lower; however moves could be subject to near-term volatility - US earnings, election uncertainties, and Spain all pose risks - and increasingly to momentum-slowing central bank resistance. (...)

In short, we see the possibility of a short-term pull-back in Asian FX. We would use bounces in USD/Asia to resell USD against KRW, PHP, MYR and INR at key resistance levels of 1115, 42, 3.08 and 54.50 respectively. There are however two Asian currencies where we prefer to run tactical shorts. First, we like being short SGD against its policy basket, given the more asymmetric risk-reward profile with SGD NEER trading extremely close to the top of its policy band. Second, we also like buying 1M USD/TWD NDFs, given some insulation from the positive carry in the trade (around +1.4% annualized), the recent reversal in equity flows and the step-up in CBC resistance at levels near the year’s lows in spot."

Tags: Asia FX, Asia Forex, Deutsche Bank, INR, KRW, MYR, PHP, SGD, TWD