Aussie dollar falls below US$0.65
Daily Currency Update
The Australian dollar is slightly weaker this morning when valued against the Greenback, falling below US$0.65 despite strong employment data yesterday. Australia's unemployment rate has ticked up slightly, from 3.6 per cent to 3.7 per cent, according to the Bureau of Statistics. New data show the number of people in employment increased last month by 55,000 and the number of officially unemployed rose by 27,900. Altogether, that saw the size of the labour force increase, relative to the population, which pushed the participation rate back up from 66.8 per cent to 67 per cent. The underemployment rate remained steady at 6.4 per cent. Last month's data has continued the pattern of the last 17 months, where the unemployment rate has been hovering within a tight band of 3.4 per cent to 3.7 per cent since June 2022. With the Aussie dollar slipping back towards the 0.6450 level, a sustained drop in the AUD will take the pair back down towards the 0.6400 handle where the 50-day Simple Moving Average (SMA) currently awaits. The AUD/USD is currently trading at 0.6469 at time of writing.Key Movers
In the US last night Initial Jobless Claims for the week into November 10th showed 231K new claims for unemployment benefits, nearly a two-year high for the figure. Markets were forecasting 220K, a tick above the previous week's 218K (revised from 217K). US Industrial Production declined in October by 0.6%, worse than the expected 0.1% contraction, eating away at the previous month's meager 0.1% (revised down from 0.3%). Looking ahead today in the US and we will see US Housing Starts and Building Permits for the month of October. Median market forecasts are expecting slight declines in both figures, with Housing Starts seen dipping from 1.358M to 1.35M; US Building Permits are forecast to decline from 1.471M to 1.45M.The pound sterling (GBP) was able to hold on to its earlier gains versus the US dollar (USD) on Thursday. On the UK data front we saw the latest UK inflation report revealed that consumer inflation dropped to 4.6%, down from 6.7%, the lowest since October 2021. Even though the Bank of England (BoE) has stressed rates need to be higher for longer, money market futures are not expecting more rate hikes. Looking ahead tonight UK Retail Sales are expected to print a recovery after plunging -0.9% in September monthly data. Annually, estimates are at -1.5% contraction, worse than the September data.
Expected Ranges
- AUD/USD: 0.6350 - 0.6550 ▼
- AUD/EUR: 0.5850 - 0.6050 ▼
- GBP/AUD: 1.9100 - 1.9300 ▲
- AUD/NZD: 1.0700 - 1.0900 ▲
- AUD/CAD: 0.8800 - 0.9000 ▼