Market Update – 18th December 2017 – AUD Higher Vs. The Pound, Lower Vs. The Greenback Ahead of MYEFO

AUD/EUR hasn’t moved since Friday morning, while AUD/USD is marginally lower and AUD/GBP higher following the Bank of England’s decision to hold interest rates steady at 0.5% late last week in addition to warning of slower growth.

Ahead today is the annual Mid-Year Economic & Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO). This is released by our Treasury around 12.15pm today and summed up “provides an updated economic outlook, growth forecasts, and compares the government’s fiscal performance to the strategy outlined in the prior Annual Budget.” While the data is not an interest rate decision nor employment figure it does give an updated view on a whole range of aspects of the Aussie economy and is likely to include views on how the housing market is doing, commodities prices and so forth and so may have a material impact on the Aussie dollar today. Additionally you’d think the Australian stock market will be impacted to some degree by certain comments or assumptions in the MYEFO.

In other news, Bitcoin has tested 20K USD over the weekend and may well push through this level this week while the ASX 200 stock market index managed to break through and close above the psychological 6000 barrier – lets hope it’s the start of a nice run higher particularly given Aussie equities have done very little over the past 10 years.

AUD EXCHANGE RATES:

AUD/USD – 0.7641

AUD/GBP – 0.5734

AUD/EUR – 0.6505

AUD/NZD – 1.0927

AUD/JPY – 86.081

COMMODITIES: 

Gold – A$1641/oz

Silver –  A$20.98/oz

WTI – US$57.37/barrel

DATA RELEASES TODAY:

AUD – Mid-Year Economic & Fiscal Outlook at 12.15pm