The Australian dollar was among the weakest currencies during the Tuesday’s session, falling together with house prices. The monetary policy minutes from the central bank did not reveal anything that could help the currency.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that the house price index dropped 2.4% in the December quarter from the previous three months after falling 1.5% in the third quarter. Analysts had promised a smaller drop by 1.9%.
The Reserve Bank of Australia released minutes of its March monetary policy meeting today. The minutes pointed out the disparity between the improving jobs market and slowing output growth:
Domestically, there continued to be tension between the ongoing improvement in labour market data and the apparent slowing in the momentum of output growth in the second half of 2018.
As a result, policy makers did not see a reason to adjust monetary policy just yet, preferring the wait-and-see approach:
Given that further progress in reducing unemployment and lifting inflation was a reasonable expectation, members agreed that there was not a strong case for a near-term adjustment in monetary policy. Rather, they assessed that it would be appropriate to hold the cash rate steady while new information became available that could help resolve the current tensions in the domestic economic data.
AUD/USD dropped from 0.7099 to 0.7085 as of 20:44 GMT today. EUR/AUD jumped from 1.5962 to 1.6017. AUD/JPY slipped from 79.11 to 78.94.
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