The Australian dollar was broadly strong today, rising against all of its most-traded rivals. Australia’s macroeconomic data released over the trading session was good for the large part, and that could explain the good performance of the Australian currency.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that the seasonally adjusted number of building approvals rose 0.7% in May, whereas analysts had predicted no change. The April reading got a positive revision from a drop by 4.7% to a smaller decline of 3.4%.
The seasonally adjusted trade balance surplus rose to A$5.75 billion in May from A$4.82 billion in April. That was a bigger surplus than $5.25 billion predicted by economists.
The Australian Industry Group Australian Performance of Services Index was the only relatively poor indicator released in Australia today, demonstrating a drop to 52.2 in June from 52.5 in May. But even it was not really bad as being firmly above the neutral 50.0 level the index showed that the service sector continued to expand, just with slightly slower pace.
AUD/USD rallied from 0.6993 to 0.7015 as of 12:47 GMT today. EUR/AUD declined from 1.6132 to 1.6087, retreating from the session high of 1.6165 and demonstrating the seventh decline in eight sessions. AUD/JPY opened at 75.44, dropped to the daily low of 75.12, but rebounded to 75.58 later.
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