Market Update – 7th March 2018 – AUD/USD Moves Higher Despite Continued Weak Retail Sales

Despite weaker than expected retail sales figures yesterday and a more bearish than anticipated RBA the Aussie Dollar has managed to move higher against the USD, Pound & Euro overnight. The RBA left rates on hold again noting inflation remains below their target and that current interest rates are helping to support the local economy. However there is clearly still work to be done given that retail sales figures came in pretty poor yesterday morning.

Commodity markets were mixed overnight with oil moving higher along with iron ore whilst zinc, copper and the other bass metals were reasonably flat. US equities were generally higher with the best performing index being the NASDAQ up about half a percent, while the Dow was up only a fraction of a percent.

We have more local economic data out today with quarterly GDP figures due at 11:30 a.m. The market is expecting to see around half percent growth in GDP which will obviously be eagerly anticipated buy not only market participants but also the RBA. Later this evening we will see preliminary US ADP non farm payrolls figures which are anticipated to come in around 194,000 new jobs. This figure is released ahead of the official Government number released Friday evening and can therefore result in movements in the USD as the ADP figure usually matches up pretty well with the official non-farm government figure.

AUD EXCHANGE RATES:

AUD/USD – 0.7824

AUD/GBP – 0.5632

AUD/EUR – 0.6306

AUD/NZD – 1.0726

AUD/JPY – 83.067

USD/BTC – $10,769

COMMODITIES: 

Gold – A$1704/oz

Silver –  A$21.40/oz

WTI – US$62.22/barrel

DATA RELEASES TODAY:

AUD – Quarterly GDP at 11.30am

USD – ADP Non-Farm Payrolls at 12.15am