The New Zealand dollar, as well as its Australian counterpart, was strong today. The currencies rose against their most-traded rivals even as economic growth in China, the biggest trading partner of both New Zealand and Australia, was slower than expected. The miss was small, though, and other Chinese macroeconomic indicators were within expectations.
The National Bureau of Statistics of China reported that gross domestic product rose 6.5% in the third quarter of 2018 from a year ago. That is compared to the forecast increase of 6.6% and the growth by 6.7% registered in the previous quarter.
Year-to-date investment in fixed assets rose 5.4% from the same period of the previous year. Annual growth of industrial production was at 5.8% in the third quarter of this year compared to 6.0% predicted by analysts and 6.1% logged in the previous three months. Growth of retail sales accelerated to 9.2%, whereas economists had expected the same 9.0% rate as in the second quarter of 2018. The unemployment rate edged down from 5.0% to 4.9% in September from the previous month.
There were few macroeconomic releases in New Zealand today, while Australia did not release any. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand reported that annual growth of credit card spending remained in September at the same 7.8% rate as in August.
NZD/USD jumped from 0.6541 to 0.6599 as of 11:18 GMT today. AUD/USD climbed from 0.7099 to 0.7139. AUD/NZD declined from 1.0844 to 1.0818 after rising to the high of 1.0875 earlier, while its daily low of 1.0803 was the lowest since the big surge on June 28.
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