{"id":313935,"date":"2026-03-05T08:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T08:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/313935\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T08:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T08:03:11","slug":"australian-trade-balance-highlights-a-light-asia-pacific-calendar-eyes-on-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/313935\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian trade balance highlights a light Asia-Pacific calendar. Eyes on Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Asia-Pacific economic calendar has only one highlight today and that’s the Australian January trade balance in goods report. The consensus is a surplus of A$3.9 billion, in a solid improvement from +$3.337 billion in December.<\/p>\n

Yesterday’s price action in AUD was strange as it was a laggard despite the stronger GDP number. I tend to think the drop in gold prices and rout in mining stocks might have discouraged some of the thinking around an investment boom. <\/p>\n

Naturally, all eyes remain on the Middle East but the market is clearly getting more comfortable with the risks around the war. Today, the US and Israel claimed “local air superiority” and said they’ve struck 1000 targets since Feb 28. <\/p>\n

I wrote yesterday<\/a> about the good news in the Iran war and that was a declining number of offensive ballistic missile launches from Iran. The latest day saw just 10-15 launches across all fronts in what’s been a sharp and continued decline that looks like it’s headed to near zero. That doesn’t exclude the tens of thousands of drones in the arsenal but it limits the damage Iran can do to regional oil infrastructure. <\/p>\n

As for the drones, it looks like the launches are less coordinated and that also lowers the risks. Launching 100 at once can saturate the target’s air defenses but 10 at a time are more likely to be shot down.<\/p>\n

As for the rest of what we’re watching, it’s all about Korea. The rout in the Kospi yesterday has the market on the highest alert and anything can happen.<\/p>\n

Kospi daily<\/p>\n

I lean towards a bounce given the big pickups in risk assets in the past 12 hours but it will be volatile once again. Along the same lines, Japanese stocks will need to stabilize.<\/p>\n

I will be watching bitcoin, gold and bonds as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Asia-Pacific economic calendar has only one highlight today and that’s the Australian January trade balance in goods…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-313935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}