The Australian dollar was trading generally lower today due to an unexpected drop of private capital expenditure last week. Released at the start of Thursday’s trading session, a report on construction work done showed a decline as well, but it was not as big as experts had feared. The Forex market was in a risk-off mode after US President Donald Trump officially supported Hong Kong protesters, and that also had a negative impact on the Aussie.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that private capital expenditure fell 0.2% in the September quarter from the previous three months. That was a surprise to analysts as they were expecting no change. The indicator dropped 0.6% in the June quarter.
Construction work done fell 0.4% in the previous quarter from the prior three months. Nevertheless, the reading was not as bad as the median forecast of a 1.0% drop. The drop in the second quarter of this year got a positive revision from 3.8% to 2.8%.
Going forward, the Aussie will react to news affecting the general market sentiment, in particular those about shifts in the Sino-US relations. As for macro releases in Australia, the next week will be full of important reports. Of particular interest to traders will be GDP data due for release on Wednesday. A monetary policy decision on Tuesday will also be very important to the currency.
AUD/USD fell from 0.6774 to 0.6768 as of 11:39 GMT today, touching the low of 0.6759 intraday. EUR/AUD rose from 1.6226 to 1.6254, and its daily high was at 1.6287. AUD/JPY declined from 74.21 to 74.09 but rebounded from the session minimum of 73.91.
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