Investing.com - The British pound fell after the government was defeated in a vote on the timetable for Brexit, diminishing the possibility of the U.K. leaving the EU before the end of this month.
The GBP/USD pair fell 0.2% to 1.2847 by 12:06 AM ET (04:06 GMT).
With no major events or economic data scheduled in Asia today, traders focused on news in the U.K. as lawmakers rejected Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to fast-track his Brexit deal through parliament.
“For now it seems the market is still generally expecting this is a setback, but not a fatal setback, to a negotiated Brexit,” said Jeremy Stretch, head of G-10 currency strategy at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, in a Reuters report. “There hasn’t been a rapid uptick in no-deal pricing at this point.”
While the vote means that it is almost impossible for Johnson to get his deal ratified by next week, the risk of a no-deal scenriao was also largely neutralized as the government had earlier won a first vote on the deal legislation to progress.
Traders also continued monitoring the situation on the Sino-U.S. trade front, although no major news is expected before officials from the two nations meet at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Chile in mid-November.
Reports have suggested that Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping may sign the first phase of a trade agreement at the summit.
The U.S. Dollar Index that tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies inched up 0.1% to 97.328.
The USD/CNY pair climbed 0.1% to 7.0842.
The AUD/USD pair and the NZD/USD pair were both down 0.2%.
The USD/JPY pair also dropped 0.2% to 108.28.