Aussie dollar opens slightly above US73¢

Daily Currency Update

AUD - Australian Dollar

The Australian dollar started the week advancing against its US counterpart trading around 0.7440. Unfortunately after the release of both the Australian employment and inflation data which fuelled investors’ concerns the Aussie dollar couldn’t hold on to those gains and closed the week around the 0.73 level. Australia reported that it lost 46.3K job positions in the month of October, vs expectations of a 50K gain. The Australian Unemployment Rate jumped to 5.25%, as the Participation Rate increased to 64.7%. At the same time, Consumer Inflation Expectations soared to 4.6% in November from 3.6% in the previous month. On a positive note, sentiment indicators improved, as Westpac Consumer Confidence improved to 0.6% in November, while October NAB’s Business Confidence printed at 21.

Looking ahead this week and on Tuesday the Reserve Bank of Australia will publish the minutes of its latest meeting, while Governor Philip Lowe will offer a speech. Later in the week, Australia will unveil the Q3 Wage Price Index, foreseen at 0.5% in the three months to September. Australian wage growth stood at 0.4% in the three months to June, down from 0.6% in the previous quarter. From a technical perspective, the AUD/USD pair is currently trading at 0.7319. We continue to expect support to hold on moves approaching 0.7270 while now any upward push will likely meet resistance around 0.7330.