The Australian dollar gained against its most-traded rivals today after the release of macroeconomic indicators in China, Australia’s biggest trading partner. While not all indicators were especially good, most of them were decent enough to support the Aussie.
The National Bureau of Statistics of China reported that gross domestic product rose 6.2% in the second quarter of this year from a year ago, down from 6.4% in the first quarter and matching expectations. Quarter-on-quarter though, GDP rose 1.6%, up from 1.4% in the previous three months and above the consensus of 1.5%.
As for other indicators, fixed asset investment rose 5.8% in the first half of 2019 from a year ago, while market participants were expecting the same 5.6% rate of growth as in the previous reporting period. Industrial production climbed 6.3% in June, year-on-year, which was far faster growth than 5.2% predicted by analysts and 5.0% registered in the previous month. Retail sales jumped 9.8%, whereas markets were expecting about the same 8.6% rate of growth as in the preceding month. The unemployment rate was at 5.1% in June, up from 5.0% in May.
AUD/USD gained from 0.7012 to 0.7033 as of 15:49 GMT today. EUR/AUD fell from 1.6055 to 1.6002. AUD/JPY went up from 75.64 to 75.91.
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