Market Update – 19th January 2018 – Base Metals Lose Ground But AUD Grinding Higher

Despite base metals and commodities in general losing a bit of their shine over the past few sessions AUD has managed to hold ground against the Greenback and Euro. Commodities markets have been dragged down in recent days by profit taking following a very strong surge in metals prices since early December. I remain bullish on the industrial and precious metals through 2018 given we have rising global growth and inflation looking like it wants to pop higher. Inflation, growth and a weaker USD which is what we’ve seen more recently all suggest AUD/USD may test previous highs reached between July-September around 0.8000-0.8100. So exporters may need to hold tight, while for the importers its certainly a good time to take advantage of rates while they’re up – don’t miss the opportunity.

Data released yesterday showed the unemployment rate rose while far more jobs were created than had been forecast which is a bit of a head scratcher until you drill down into the results and what we see is that while we had a bumper employment figure with 35,000 new jobs created, 20,500 became unemployed!

The only data out today is UK retail sales at 8.30pm.

AUD EXCHANGE RATES:

AUD/USD – 0.7996

AUD/GBP – 0.5753

AUD/EUR – 0.6533

AUD/NZD – 1.0943

AUD/JPY – 88.794

USD/BTC – $11,953

COMMODITIES: 

Gold – A$1659/oz

Silver –  A$21.19/oz

WTI – US$63.73/barrel

DATA RELEASES TODAY:

GBP – Retail Sales at 8.30pm