The Australian dollar was somewhat soft on Tuesday after the release of policy minutes by the Reserve Bank of Australia. Macroeconomic data from China, Australia’s biggest trading partner, did not help the currency, being rather mixed.
The RBA released minutes of its April meeting today. The central bank confirmed that it expects to perform a hike, not a cut, as its next move:
In current circumstances, members agreed that it was more likely that the next move in the cash rate would be up, rather than down.
Yet policy makers thought that it is still not the right time for that:
Members also agreed that there was not a strong case for a near-term adjustment in monetary policy.
The National Bureau of Statistics of China released its report about economic performance in the first quarter of 2018. It showed that gross domestic product maintained stable annual growth of 6.8% for the third quarter in a row. Investment in fixed assets grew 7.5%, somewhat less than analysts had predicted (7.7%) and compared to the previous reporting period (7.9%). Industrial production rose 6.0% in March, year-on-year, slowing from the 7.2% rate of growth registered in February and missing the analysts’ average estimate of a 6.4% increase. At the same time, retail sales jumped by 10.1% last month, whereas economists had expected the same 9.7% rate of growth as in the previous month.
AUD/USD went down from 0.7777 to 0.7770 as of 22:48 GMT today, touching the low of 0.7760 intraday. EUR/AUD ticked up from 1.5907 to 1.5921. AUD/JPY slid from 83.31 to 83.04 before trading at 83.16.
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