Market Update – 4th May 2017 – Fed Holds Rates But Reiterates Economic Signals Are Strong

A busy night of economic data sees AUD in vastly different territory this morning than this time yesterday, as surmised in my report yesterday morning. The reason for the quite dramatic fall in the value of the Aussie vs the majors is as a result of better than forecast economic data out of both the U.S and the U.K but also the fact that the Federal Reserve still looks like it’s on track for two further rate hikes this year. Janet Yellen and the FOMC while choosing not to raise rates at last nights meeting did however paint a reasonably rosy picture of the U.S economy and how they anticipate that they’ll start planning to exit alot of the assets which they bought during the era of QE (quantitative easing).

Other things of note is the fact that commodities appear to back on the nose with traders selling off positions across nickel, copper and iron ore while equities fell as a result of the likelihood of higher interest rates making doing business more expensive. Ahead today is our local trade balance figure along with a speech from RBA Governor Lowe at around 1pm this afternoon. U.K services PMI follows all of this tonight at 6.30pm with economists expecting to see further positive signs of life in the U.K economy.

DATA RELEASES TODAY:

AUD – Trade Balance at 11.30am

AUD – RBA Gov. Lowe Speaks at 1.10pm

GBP – Services PMI at 6.30pm

AUD EXCHANGE RATES:

AUD/USD – 0.7377

AUD/GBP – 0.5720

AUD/EUR – 0.6779

AUD/NZD – 1.0725

AUD/JPY – 83.201