Forex Special - Asian equities turned moderately lower on Tuesday, after a larger-than-expected earning report from Alcoa and a 5th session of gains in Wall Street failed to move the market towards positive territory overnight.
Wary investors opted to be mostly sidelined until more key blue-chip companies release its earning reports in order to further define the sentiment for the week. Besides, a plunge in the Chinese market (-1.70%) weighed on other indexes, forcing them to take a minor dive.
Australian ASX-200 retreated by 0.56%, the Hang Seng stood nearly unchanged at -0.05%, the Japanese shares were down 0.20% while the Korean Kospi was able to stay afloat by 0.08%.
In the FX market, most pairs accommodated in narrow margins on a low volume trading session. EUR/USD barely had a 25 pips range-bound fluctuation, staying almost unchanged at 1.2590 area.
GBP/USD replicated tepid moves only to decline around 10-15 pips to 1.5020 following an opening at 1.5030 on the back of 3 straight days of falls since peaking at 1.5240 (2-month high).
USD/JPY showed some more vitality and after topping at 88.85 level (intra-day high), the pair had a retreat towards 88.43 (intra-day low). An upside correction sent the price up to 88.58 now.
