ForexLive Asia FX news wrap: Potential Biden-Putin summit gives risk

It was an eventful news day (and
weekend) with the focus of course on Ukraine.

Over
the weekend US intel said
Russia

was on the brink of an attack. This was the basis of a report during
Asia time that turned out to be merely a rehash.

Bigger
news came of French president Macron speaking (phone call) with Biden
and Putin, and of a second call with Putin (for over an hour). Macron
has set up a potential Biden-Putin summit meeting. One of the caveats
is provided there is no Russian invasion of Ukraine. We’ll see.
More in the bullets above.

The
‘summit’ news gave a lift to risk trades. These had fallen
earlier in the session, US equity index futures dropping on the
reopen for the week but surging into positive territory on the summit
proposal.

Major
FX surged against the USD. EUR, NZD, AUD, GBP all higher, with JPY
and CHF up also against the dollar. EUR/USD (for example) rallied
from under 1.1320 to above 1.1360.

Oil and gold lost ground on the summit news.

Of
minor note only, Japanese (flash) PMIs for February fell sharply in
the only data release of note.

On
the central bank front we had the People’s Bank of China leave the
1- and 5-year Loan Prime Rates (LPR) unchanged at the setting today.
Both had seen small rate cuts in January.

Bitcoin dropped under $39K over the weekend.

Note:
its a US and Canadian holiday today, Monday 21 February 2022. Globex
traded Sunday evening US time but will close midday Monday (for equity – others vary, see below). Reopening
will be later on Monday (local time). See pic below: