Indonesia’s exports in December surpassed expectations, recording an increase of 11.64% compared to an anticipated decrease of 2.4%. This performance indicates robust export growth for the country at the year’s end.<\/p>\n
The Australian Dollar weakened despite China’s Ratingdog PMI reflecting positive movement. Meanwhile, the NZD\/USD strengthened past 0.6000 following favourable Chinese PMI data.<\/p>\n
USD\/JPY maintained its position above 155.00 amidst gradual monetary policy adjustments from the Bank of Japan. The Chinese Ratingdog Manufacturing PMI rose to 50.3, aligning with forecasts.<\/p>\n
EUR\/USD remained below 1.1850 as US Federal Reserve policy signals influenced market sentiment. The GBP\/USD maintained stability near 1.3700 as market participants evaluated expectations from the Federal Reserve under Kevin Warsh’s influence.<\/p>\n
Bitcoin saw a decline, dropping below $75,000, continuing a bearish trend with a potential further drop towards $70,000. Global central banks retained their policy rates, with emerging markets suggesting potential easing in the near future.<\/p>\n
A variety of brokers listed for 2026 cater to different trading needs. This includes brokers offering low spreads, those specialising in trading EUR\/USD, high leverage brokers, and others meeting regional preferences such as MENA and Latin America. Notably, there are also brokers providing Islamic and swap-free accounts. <\/p>\n
We saw Indonesia’s exports for December 2025 shatter expectations, coming in at a massive 11.64% growth instead of a forecasted decline. This surprise suggests a powerful undercurrent of strength in the Indonesian economy that markets have overlooked. Traders should consider this a key signal for emerging market sentiment in the first quarter of this year.<\/p>\n
This isn’t an isolated event; it follows the steady Chinese manufacturing PMI data from January 2026, which is now being supported by reports of record iron ore shipments from Australia last month. This points to a resilient demand story in the Asia-Pacific region, even as other global economies show signs of slowing. Therefore, we should be looking at call options on commodity-linked currencies like the Australian Dollar, which may be currently undervalued.<\/p>\n
The US Dollar remains a factor, with January’s inflation figures in the US coming in slightly hot at 3.2%, keeping the Federal Reserve on a cautious footing. This creates an interesting dynamic where emerging market strength clashes with a firm dollar. A potential strategy is to use derivatives to play this divergence, such as pairing a long position in the Indonesian Rupiah (IDR) against a short one in the Euro.<\/p>\n
Looking back at the commodity supercycle in the late 2010s, we saw that strong export numbers often preceded a sustained period of IDR outperformance. Given the unexpected December data, buying out-of-the-money IDR call options with a three-month expiry could offer an attractive risk-reward profile. This allows us to capitalize on potential upside while limiting our initial capital outlay.<\/p>\n
The persistent strength in China’s industrial data makes the Australian dollar’s recent weakness look like a potential mispricing. We should be looking at AUD\/JPY call spreads to position for a rebound in the Aussie, funded by the low-yielding yen. This trade benefits from both a potential rise in commodity demand and the ongoing policy divergence with the Bank of Japan.<\/p>\n
Create your live VT Markets account<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0start trading<\/a>\u00a0now. <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Indonesia’s exports beat forecasts; global currencies mixed as markets react to PMI data and policy expectations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":17028,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-live-updates"],"acf":{"acf_article_selection_author":null},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}