The Australian dollar did not show a clear trend today. The Reserve Bank of Australia left its monetary policy unchanged at its last policy meeting this year, as was widely expected. China’s macroeconomic data was helpful to the Australian currency.
Surprising no one, the RBA left its monetary policy without change, keeping the key interest rate at 0.1%. The central bank noted that domestic economic indicators were positive lately:
In Australia, the economic recovery is under way and recent data have generally been better than expected. This is good news, but the recovery is still expected to be uneven and drawn out and it remains dependent on significant policy support.
As the economy still needs support to recover, the bank said that it is not planning to start raising interest rates for at least three years. But the RBA also signaled that it is ready to expand the size of its asset-purchase program if necessary. Overall, it looks like markets have discarded the possibility of a rate cut into the negative territory or even to zero. That is positive for the Aussie as even lower interest rates would make it less attractive to investors.
Meanwhile, the Caixin China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index increased from 53.6 in October to 54.9 in November, whereas experts were expecting it to stay the same. That was the sharpest improvement in conditions since November 2010. The report commented on the result:
The health of the sector has now improved in each of the past seven months, to indicate a sustained and strong recovery from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak earlier in the year.
AUD/USD rose from 0.7341 to 0.7359 as of 14:07 GMT today, reaching the high of 0.7373 intraday. EUR/AUD gained from 1.6234 to 1.6294. AUD/CAD traded at 0.9537, near the opening level of 0.9541, after rising to the high of 0.9562 earlier.
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