Australian Dollar Rallies on Economic Data, RBA Statement

The Australian dollar rallied today following good economic reports from Australia and its main trading partner, China. The statement released by the Reserve Bank of Australia following the policy meeting was also relatively helpful to the currency.

The RBA kept its main interest rate at 1.5%, providing no surprise. The accompanying statement was almost the same as the previous ones for the most part, but it was interesting to see that the bank dropped the mention that “inflation is likely to remain low for some time,” while keeping the wording “central forecast remains for inflation to pick up gradually.”

Retail sales rose 0.5% in October from September, exceeding market expectations of a 0.3% increase. The current account deficit shrank to A$9.1 billion in the September quarter from A$9.7 billion in the previous three months but was still above the average projection of A$8.8 billion.

Meanwhile, the Caixin China General Services PMI rose from 51.2 to 51.9 in November, above the forecast value of 51.5.

AUD/USD rallied from 0.7597 to 0.7643 as of 11:50 GMT today. EUR/AUD dropped from 1.5613 to 1.5524. AUD/JPY gained from 85.38 to 85.99.

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