Rangey

Broadly directionless trade amid thin volumes to kick off the week. Several markets in the region are still absent for Lunar New Year, other markets are returning after observing holiday's on late last week, while US markets will be absent today for President's day.

• AUD and NZD both hovering around neutral levels. AUD appears broadly unaffected by the discovery of a cluster of COVID-19 cases and subsequent 5-day lockdown in Victoria, AUD/USD is flat, holding near last week's high.
• NZD is slightly softer, down around 3 pips. New Zealand imposed a 3-day snap lockdown in Auckland and raised the alert level in the rest of the country to 2 in reaction to the detection of three new community cases of Covid-19. PM Ardern confirmed this morning that the 3 new cases are the UK variant of the virus. Restrictions will be reviewed daily and are planned to last for 72h. Alert level 2 requires citizens to observe social distancing rules and wear masks (although schools and businesses remain open), while Aucklanders were asked to stay at home.
• JPY pairs have weakened slightly, but are off lows after Japanese GDP data showed the economy grew 12.7% against the MNI median estimate of 9.9%. Over the weekend, a strong earthquake (7.1 magnitude) hit off the coast of Fukushima prefecture. There was no tsunami risk, but injured over 150 people and left several hundred thousand without electric power. Elsewhere Japan gave the nod to Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine and will start inoculating front-line medical workers as soon as this week.
• Offshore yuan has moved in a tight range, USD/CNH last up 5 pips. GBP has continued its run higher from Friday, the pair last up 27 pips on the session. There is little in the way of macro headlines, data earlier in the session from Rightmove showed house prices rose 0.5% M/M in Feb after a 0.9% decline in January.