The Australian dollar retained its weakness today after yesterday’s detrimental economic reports. While the currency regained some of its strength against the euro, the Aussie remained soft against the US dollar and the Japanese yen.
Australia’s trade balance deficit widened from A$1.23 billion to A$3.89 billion in April on a seasonally adjusted basis, exceeding analysts’ projections. Retail sales were unchanged on April while traders had counted on a small increase by 0.4 percent. The negative data led to a huge slump of the Australian dollar during Thursday’s trading.
Not all indicators were bad, though. Gross domestic product report released on Wednesday showed that the Australian economy expanded 0.9 percent (seasonally adjusted) in the first quarter of this year, beating analysts’ expectations. Today, Australian Industry Group reported that the construction index rose a little in May. Yet all the positive news had no big impact on the Aussie, at least for now.
AUD/USD dropped from 0.7785 to 0.7686 yesterday and traded close to that level as of 00:01 GMT today. AUD/JPY traded near 95.60 following yesterday’s drop from 96.72 to 95.58. EUR/AUD rallied from 1.4474 to 1.4612 on the previous trading session but fell to 1.4579 during the current session.
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