Rumors swirled on social media on Tuesday that China's currency dropped sharply in overnight trade, but the purported move may have been an isolated hiccup from some providers.
Some currency data providers were showing that the yuan tumbled, with the dollar fetching as much as 7.49 yuan in overnight trade. It wasn't clear if the data were indicating the offshore yuan (Exchange: CNH=) or the onshore currency (Exchange: CNY=), but the onshore currency does not trade overnight. That would have been an 8.8 percent rise for the currency pair from the onshore close of 6.8830, according to Reuters data.
China's central bank does not allow the currency to move more than 2 percent from its daily fixing in onshore trade. While policymakers can not closely control offshore trade of the currency, it usually remains relatively close to its onshore counterpart.
Data charts on Google and currency-data provider and money transfer service XE showed the short-lived blip. Google confirmed that the figure was a bug and that it was fixing it. In its Finance section, Google's disclaimers state that it can't guarantee the accuracy of foreign-exchange rates and advises confirming rates before making transactions.
An email to XE sent outside office hours wasn't immediately returned.
Dow Jones reported that U.K.-based brokerage and data provider ICAP was the source for the data. A call to ICAP's Singapore office went unanswered and it didn't immediately return an emailed request for comment.
Google's data chart indicated that the data source was data provider SIX Financial Information. A call to SIX's Singapore office went unanswered and an emailed request for comment wasn't immediately returned.
Analysts generally indicated to CNBC that they hadn't seen any sign of the drop. Reuters data didn't show anything close, indicating that the offshore dollar/yuan's high for the year was at 6.9650 and the onshore yuan's was at 6.9210.
Sean Yokota, head of Asia strategy at SEB, told CNBC that people were sharing a screenshot on Chinese social media platform WeChat showing a mispricing in Google data showing the dollar was fetching 7.4 yuan.
He noted that China's policymakers would likely want to avoid a devaluation of the currency. Indeed, analysts have recently noted that policymakers have appeared to slow the yuan's fall against the dollar (STOXX: .DXY) as the greenback surged since the surprise U.S. election win of Donald Trump.
Similarly, Richard Yetsenga, chief economist at ANZ, told CNBC that while there was a lot of chatter, it would be "quite dramatic" if the 7.48 figure were to turn out to be accurate, but he added that it was hard to imagine at this stage.