Market Update – 30th October 2018 – U.S Stocks Fall Again Dragging AUD & Commodities Lower

Well it looks like this week is headed in the same direction as last week with a promising start & good momentum yesterday descending into savage selling in U.S equities and some commodities overnight.  The AUD and commodities were holding up nicely through the Asian session yesterday with our local equities index even managing to post solid gains of about 1%, but that all ceased pretty quickly when Trump started talking further tariffs on China – this accompanied by weaker growth in tech stocks saw U.S equities lose as much as 1.6% (led by the Nasdaq…again); Europe fared much better with green across the board.

So where does this leave the AUD? Unfortunately its lower today and lower against all the majors. Unless things turn around quickly we could see the wholesale AUD/USD rate starting with a 6 at some point this week. Local building approvals are out at 11.30am but I don’t expect this to have any impact on the Aussie dollar as we are really taking our cues right now from geopolitical issues and commodity prices.

AUD EXCHANGE RATES:

AUD/USD – 0.7028

AUD/GBP – 0.5483

AUD/EUR – 0.6173

AUD/NZD – 1.0785

AUD/JPY – 79.003

USD/BTC – $6,215

OTHER MARKETS: 

All Ords (XAO) – 5,813

Gold – A$1,742/oz

Silver –  A$20.50/oz

WTI – US$66.74/barrel

DATA RELEASES TODAY:

AUD – Building Approvals m/m at 11.30am

USD – CB Consumer Confidence at 1.00am