Singapore Stocks (SGX) Market News

USD/JPY continued to find buying support, despite an overnight sell-off in risk assets plus continued buying in US treasuries that effectively dampened the appeal of the USD. Risk was slammed in both late European and early US trade, following comments from Mr Trichet that suggested warning lights were flashing red on the European debt crisis. This saw two-year yields drop three basis points, while further down the curve, ten-year yields dropped seven basis points as traders searched for the safe-haven that is the US treasury market. With this having little effect, USD/JPY has traded between 80.65 and 80.39 since the start of the US session and into Asian trade. US data also continued on its woeful run, with weekly jobless claims data seeing a slight increase to follow its recent path of above 400,000 claimants. New home sales figures on the other hand came out above expectations, but declined from last month. Macro accounts are still bearish on the USD/JPY pair, although a break of 81.06 would change that view. In the short term however, given there is little economic data in Japan to key off on, it will be down to readings on both US durable goods and GDP to direct flows towards the USD. We have given up on hoping for good US data, although it is worthy of note that durable goods is an extremely volatile data point; economists are expecting a pickup in growth here of 1.5%. Chris Weston, Australia