Market Update – 21st February 2017 – Iron Ore Prices Surge Past US$90 A Tonne Supporting AUD Crosses & Government Coffers

Good morning all. Without wanting to sound like a broken record the Aussie dollar is once again little changed overnight. In fact the three majors AUD/USD, AUD/EUR and AUD/GBP are all within about 10-20 points of where they were trading this time yesterday morning. Commodities markets were mixed while iron ore continued to push higher with the latest move pushing iron ore prices past US$90 a tonne which explains the Aussie dollars resilience of late. Recent comments from the likes of Deutsche Bank suggest the Aussie may still have room to move higher, but that is certainly pure unadulterated speculation.

Things will likely get a little busier today with the release of the latest monetary policy minutes from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) at 11.30am this morning. While we’re not expecting to see anything out of the ordinary in the RBAs most recent minutes release certainly any change in rhetoric will be duly noted and could result in a sharp move in the Aussie if either overly bearish (negative) or bullish (positive). Other than that U.K inflation hearings are held again tonight which will give us a better insight into the health of the U.K economy – those watching AUD/GBP might want to jump on Bloomberg around 9.00pm tonight to follow the action.

DATA RELEASES TODAY:

AUD – Monetary Policy Minutes at 11.30am

GBP – UK Inflation Hearings at 9.00pm

AUD EXCHANGE RATES:

AUD/USD – 0.7654

AUD/GBP – 0.6134

AUD/EUR – 0.7209

AUD/NZD – 1.0692

AUD/JPY – 86.924