Daily Currency Update

AUD - Australian Dollar

The Australian Dollar has primarily traded sideways over the Tuesday session and remains under pressure from its offshore counterparts. With little on the domestic calendar to spur advances, the Aussie opens this morning at 0.7048 despite some weakness in the Greenback. The Aussie oscillated to the beat of China with some volatility early in the Tuesday session. Chinese manufacturing and non-manufacturing PMI surprised to the downside which undermined Australian dollar valuations and saw the Aussie fall as low as 0.7038. Nevertheless, the Aussie recovered during the American session after a mixed bag of results from the world’s largest economy. Ultimately however, the Aussie continued its trajectory with very little volatility to write home about.

Moving into Wednesday the Aussie again is set to enjoy a quiet day on the economic calendar with only news from across the Tasman to potentially move markets. China, and most of Europe is also due for a public holiday, removing some liquidity from todays trading. Looking at the technicals the Aussie continues to remain under bearish pressure with support firmly in place at 0.7027.

Key Movers

It was an eventful day for the worlds largest economies with China kicking things off during the Asian session. Chinese manufacturing and non-manufacturing PMI surprised to the downside which undermined some emerging market and commodity currencies. Chinese data also did little to allay fears that China won’t be able spur global growth again as China tempers its stimulation package. Nevertheless, China activity remains in relatively good shape but is still tentative at best.

The United States also had a busy day on the economic calendar with a number of releases that ultimately led to a softer Greenback and a flat equity market. It was a mixed bag for the United States with the Chicago PMI coming in very weak but there were some strong pending home sales and consumer confidence data to temper the falls. Adding to the mix was employment cost index data which was released in-line with expectations at 0.7%.

Within this context, the Euro and Sterling are the best performers with some positive Eurozone data pushing the Euro up a modest 0.3% to 1.1213. The Sterling however exceeded even these gains, reaching 1.3029, an increase of 0.8% after news that the Government and Labour Party will try one more time to come to some sort of agreement.

Expected Ranges