Daily Currency Update

AUD - Australian Dollar

The Aussie dollar rose steadily throughout Friday’s trading session to open at 0.6895 this morning, just coming down from breaking through the 0.6900 barrier. The initial momentum started as Retail Sales data in November showed an increase to 0.9%, beating out expectations of 0.4%.

This was propelled further owing to the weaker US dollar, after less than expected employment data, showing a change of only 145k employed people in the US last month, opposed to it’s forecast of 162k.

We continue to expect support to hold on moves approaching 0.6870 while any upward push will likely meet resistance around 0.6930.

Key Movers

As above, US Non-Farm employment data did not meet expectations, falling short of it’s forecast of 162k, with only 145k jobs created. Job creation is an important indicator of consumer spending, as it accounts for a majority of overall economic activity. The US unemployment rate held steady at 3.5%.

Over in Canada, the roles were reversed as employment change came back better than expected at 35.2k opposed to 24.9k, and their unemployment rate dropped from 5.6% from 5.9% last month.

In the future, we can expect to see some movement in these currency pairs with the release of the US CPI data just after midnight on Tuesday. Showing the change in the price of goods and services purchased by consumers, consumer prices account for a majority of overall inflation

Expected Ranges