South Korean won leads Asian FX higher, stocks mixed on rate fears

South Korea’s won led gains among emerging Asian currencies on Thursday after the Bank of Korea ended a year-long run of rate hikes, while regional equities were mixed as minutes of the US Federal Reserve’s last meeting reinforced a hawkish tone.

The won strengthened 0.7%, while stocks in Seoul gained over 1%.

The Bank of Korea’s monetary policy board held its policy interest rate steady at 3.50%, in line with expectations by the economists in a Reuters poll, and said its monetary tightening campaign would not resume if inflation followed an expected path towards moderation.

“The decision to be unchanged was no surprise, but there were several members of the Bank of Korea board that highlighted that they were open to a higher terminal rate of 3.75%, and that has given a bit of a lift to Korean won,” said Mitul Kotecha, head of EM strategy at TD Securities.

The Singapore dollar pared early gains and was up 0.1% after official data showed that key consumer price gauge rose 5.5% in January, slightly below forecast though faster than the preceding month.

The Philippine peso, the Malaysian ringgit and the Indonesian rupiah advanced between 0.1% and 0.3%.

“There is a bit of consolidation in the dollar after the Fed minutes and we are seeing Asian currencies take advantage of that today,” Kotecha said.

The dollar held steady near recent highs as the Fed minutes reinforced views that the US central bank is likely to stay on its aggressive rate-hike path.

The minutes showed that nearly all Fed policymakers rallied behind a decision to further slow the pace of rate hikes, but also indicated that curbing unacceptably high inflation would be the “key factor” in how much more rates need to rise.

“The FOMC minutes were nowhere in the vicinity of inciting ‘Powell pivot’ bets; comprising risk asset boost amid falling UST yields and USD,” Vishnu Varathan, head, economics & strategy at Mizuho Bank, wrote.

“The relief was mostly from ‘almost all participants’ favouring measured 25 bp hikes… That’s to say, fears of an escalation in the magnitude of rate hikes to 50 bp were mitigated.”

Equities in the region were mixed with stocks in India and Indonesia advancing 0.1% each, while those in Thailand and Singapore retreated 0.5% and 0.8%, respectively.