The Australian dollar declined against all of its most-traded peers today despite the stabilizing market sentiment that was helping riskier currencies linked to commodities. The Aussie fell for third consecutive trading session versus most of its rivals, while against some it posted even a longer stretch of declines. Macroeconomic data was negative to the currency.
ANZ Australian Jobs Advertisements fell by 6.7% in December on a seasonally adjusted monthly basis. Year-on-year, job ads fell by 18.8%. The report commented on the result:
This was the largest monthly decline since the May result which was affected by public holidays and the federal election.
The report attributed the decline also to fires in December stating:
In the final two weeks of December, the number of job ads declined by more than we would expect for that time of the year, suggesting that the escalating bushfire crises had an impact.
Released at the start of the week, the Australian Industry Group Australian Performance of Manufacturing Index logged an increase to 48.3 from 48.1. While the reading below the neutral 50.0 level of no change was still indicating a contraction of the sector, the increase means that the pace of decline has slowed. That was the second consecutive month of decline, for the first time since mid-2015.
AUD/USD dropped from 0.6938 to 0.6901 as of 9:16 GMT today. EUR/AUD gained from 1.6133 to 1.6206. AUD/JPY slid from 75.20 to 74.84.
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