The Australian dollar was little changed against most of its major rivals today but dropped versus the Japanese yen. Today’s macroeconomic data was rather poor, weighing on the currency.
Yesterday, the Reserve Bank of Australian announced its policy decision. The central bank made no surprises, leaving interest rates stable and keeping the statement largely unchanged, reinforcing the view that the RBA will hike interest rates in the second half of 2019 at the earliest. On the positive side, RBA Governor Philip Lowe signaled in today’s speech that he anticipates a hike eventually:
If this is how things evolve, you could expect the next move in interest rates to be up, not down.
As for today’s data, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that the number of home loans dropped 1.1% in June from May. That is compared to the predicted increase by 0.1% and the previous month’s growth of 1.0%.
Now, traders wait for the RBA Monetary Policy Statement due for release on Friday.
AUD/USD traded at 0.7414 as of 9:05 GMT today after opening at 0.7420 and rising to the daily high of 0.7434. EUR/AUD opened at 1.5622 and traded at about 1.5631 at the time of writing. AUD/JPY dropped from 82.63 to 82.28.
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