Data releases Friday night included U.S retail sales, industrial production and UoM consumer sentiment. The data came out a little poorer than an anticipated with both retail sales and industrial production failing to meet expectations and even turning negative. Despite the poor data U.S equities still made marginal gains, up across the board with the Dow and Nasdaq the best performers up 0.3%. European equities didn’t fair so well with the FTSE down as much as 1%. Asian equities were mixed but on a side note, the Australian ASX 200 is the worst performer in Asia this year up only 7.5% which is markedly lower than the Hong Kong and Japanese indexes which have made gains of between 20-25% this year.
The Aussie dollar is more or less glued to the 0.8000 level vs. the Greenback failing to make much headway above or below this level recently. AUD/GBP has been on a tear to the downside as inflation and growth metrics continue to be solid out of the U.K. AUD/GBP which had been trading at nearly 0.6200 a few weeks ago, is now back below 0.5900. Whether these levels hold really depends alot on the Bank of England and how keen they are to raise interest rates from record lows at 0.25%. But there certainly is a bit of a groundswell, with some more dovish members of the BOE now keen to start lifting interest rates, perhaps as early as next months meeting. Stay tuned.
AUD EXCHANGE RATES:
AUD/USD – 0.7981
AUD/GBP – 0.5886
AUD/EUR – 0.6694
AUD/NZD – 1.0968
AUD/JPY – 88.803
DATA RELEASES TODAY:
CNY – CPI and PPI at 11.30am
***Above rates are indicative wholesale rates and intended as a guide only***
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Patrick Downes
Senior Corporate FX Dealer
Phone Patrick – 0431 278 632
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