The Yen ignores recent Consumer Data

The USD/JPY Forex market remained well within its trading range after a rather bullish and strong consumer data reading crossed the newswires. The yen ignored the data this morning.

The Japanese Cabinet Office’s released consumer confidence data for March which printed at 43.9. This was above the 43.4 print that was expected by analysts and the 43.1 seen back in February. This index has not been this high since mid-2013. The survey also painted a full picture based on a survey conducted in 5,000 Japanese households.

 This survey does give officials in Tokyo some hope that consumer demand, something they have spent five long years attempting to jumpstart, is finally ticking up. However, the official numbers are far from confident. Especially other government data. Recent retail sales data was tepid, to say the least as it widely missed the mark.

Japanese yen barely pays attention to the Data

The benchmark currency pair, the USD/JPY, as seen in the above MT 4 chart, fell to 110.40 from 110.51 after the data crossed the wires. This Forex market remains firmly in its current and all too familiar range. Investors are way more interested in today’s meeting between US President Donald Trump’s, in Florida, with the Chinese President Xi Jinping.

This meeting will have a big impact on Japan as President Trump has been quite strong with his condemnation of countries with large trade surpluses with the United States. In Trump’s eyes, China is the biggest problem here but Japan is second. This means that any trade comments, from Thursday’s Florida summit, will be closely watched by government officials in Tokyo.