Daily Currency Update
AUD - Australian DollarAUD underperformed against most of its major peers as the currency begins to slide coming into Governor Lowe and Guy Debelles’ speeches this week. AUDUSD maintained its offer-tone overnight dropping from yesterday’s high of 0.6803, touching a November low of 0.6768 during the New York session. It is currently sitting at 0.6780 ahead of ANZ Roy Morgan Weekly Consumer Confidence Index to be released this morning at 9.30am (AEDT). Key levels of intra-day support to watch are 0.6768 (November & Intra-Day Low). Resistance sits at 0.6806 (50-Day Moving Average) and 0.6826 (Daily Fibonacci 38.2%).Today we get U.S. Fed Chairmen Jerome Powell who will be on the wires during the Australian time zone, ahead of RBA Governor Lowe tonight. Lowe is talking about “unconventional monetary policy – some lessons from overseas”, a speech that will be closely watched, with the topic of great interest at present. Tonight, we also see the release of trade, new home sales and consumer confidence data in the U.S.
Key Movers
A quiet night in the U.S. session overall for FX, with the US Dollar Index climbing higher on the back of reports that China is planning to raise penalties on intellectual property violations. Other than that, headlines were light with China summoning the U.S. Ambassador to complain about the recent Hong Kong Bill passed through the senate (yet to be signed officially by Trump). Market reaction to the downside was limited on the headline with U.S. equities outperforming and U.S. Treasury yields dipping. Earlier on in the Europe Session, EURUSD continues to disappoint bulls and bears, with the French and German PMI’s a beat (although from very low levels), but the Eurozone services a miss. This saw price action briefly rally and reach the highs on the day, with the rally topping out at 1.1030, sitting now at 1.1010. 1.0990 for now remains short term support and if we close below 1.1000 on the break of it, we may see further follow through on a USD flow driven month end. New ECB president Christine Lagarde spoke at the end of last week, with nothing market moving, and we have more speakers this week in form of ECB’s Philip lane, Yves Mersch, Benoît Coeure as well as U.S. Fed’s Chairmen Jerome Powell and Lael Brainard.
Expected Ranges
- AUD/USD: 0.6750 - 0.6810 ▼
- AUD/EUR: 0.6125 - 0.6165 ▼
- GBP/AUD: 1.8975 - 1.9085 ▲
- AUD/NZD: 1.0535 - 1.0595 ▼
- AUD/CAD: 0.9000 - 0.9085 ▼