US President Donald Trump and Senate Democrats struck a deal that could avert a government shutdown and buy more time to negotiate restrictions on the administration’s immigration crackdown, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

Perplexity has signed a deal with Microsoft for AI cloud services while disagreeing with Amazon. 

On Friday, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) sets the USD/CNY central rate for the trading session ahead at 6.9678 compared to the previous day's fix of 6.9771 and 6.9459 Reuters estimate.

AUD/USD loses ground after three days of gains, trading around 0.7030 during the Asian hours on Friday. The pair remains subdued following the release of Australia’s Producer Price Index (PPI), which climbed 3.5% year-over-year (YoY) in the fourth quarter of 2025, the same pace as in Q3.

Gold price (XAU/USD) holds positive ground around $5,405 during the early Asian session on Friday. The precious metal hit a record high near $5,600 before paring gains due to profit-taking in the previous session.

OpenAI will remove GPT-4o from ChatGPT on February 13, along with several other older AI models.

Australia Private Sector Credit (YoY) rose from previous 7.4% to 7.7% in December

Australia Private Sector Credit (MoM) came in at 0.8%, above forecasts (0.6%) in December

Australia Producer Price Index (QoQ) registered at 0.8%, below expectations (1.1%) in 4Q

Australia Producer Price Index (YoY): 3.5% (4Q)

US President Donald Trump said that he will announce his choice to replace Jerome Powell as the chair of the Federal Reserve (Fed)  on Friday morning, Bloomberg reported late Thursday.

Executives at Optimism Collective have officially passed a proposal that commits 50% of Superchain sequencer revenue to buy back the company’s OP token.  The buyback strategy will start in February and make use of over-the-counter (OTC) providers to convert the Ethereum from the sequencer into OP. The Optimism Collective buyback strategy The Optimism Collective has […]

The US Treasury stated that the Chinese Yuan is “substantially undervalued” and called on China to allow its exchange rate to strengthen in a timely and orderly way, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. 

US President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to impose a 50% tariff on all aircraft sold from Canada into the United States (US), accusing Canada of unfairly blocking certification of Gulfstream business jets.

Japan Large Retailer Sales: 2% (December) vs previous 5%

Japan Industrial Production (YoY): 2.6% (December) vs -2.2%

Japan Retail Trade s.a (MoM) dipped from previous 0.6% to -2% in December

Japan Retail Trade (YoY) came in at -0.9% below forecasts (0.7%) in December

Japan Industrial Production (MoM) registered at -0.1% above expectations (-0.4%) in December

The EUR/USD pair gains ground to near 1.1965 during the early Asian session on Friday. Unpredictable US trade policy and questions over the independence of the Federal Reserve (Fed) weigh on the US Dollar (USD) against the Euro (EUR). 

Japan Tokyo CPI ex Fresh Food (YoY) below forecasts (2.2%) in January: Actual (2%)

Japan Unemployment Rate in line with expectations (2.6%) in December

Japan Tokyo Consumer Price Index (YoY) declined to 1.5% in January from previous 2%

Japan Tokyo CPI ex Food, Energy (YoY) registered at 2%, below expectations (2.2%) in January

Japan Jobs / Applicants Ratio registered at 1.19 above expectations (1.18) in December

South Korea Industrial Output (YoY) came in at -0.3%, above expectations (-2.1%) in December

South Korea Service Sector Output climbed from previous 0.7% to 1.1% in December