The Australian dollar slumped today as employment data frustrated Forex market participants, being exceptionally bad and leading to speculations about probable interest rate cut by the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Analysts have predicted a drop of employment by 6,700 in March, but the actual decrease was much bigger — 36,100. It followed the very robust growth by 74,000 in February. Moreover, the unemployment rate increased from 5.4 percent to 5.6 percent.
The Westpac Melbourne Institute Index of Consumer Sentiment fell by 5.1 percent in April from March. The reading was called “a surprising result”. Indeed, previously it looked like the Australian economy was improving and the recent string of poor data was an unpleasant surprise for traders.
AUD/USD dropped from 1.0540 to 1.0509 as of 2:13 GMT today. EUR/AUD went up from 1.2395 to 1.2420 after three sessions of losses. AUD/JPY ticked down from 105.15 to 104.68 after trading at the highest level since 2007.
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