Australian Dollar Trims NFP-Induced Losses

The Australian dollar has been moving lower throughout Friday’s trading session and dipped sharply after the release of US nonfarm payrolls. But by now, the Aussie has trimmed losses versus its rivals and even tried to log small gains against some of them, though failed, at least at the time of writing. Macroeconomic data in Australia itself was mixed.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that retail sales rose by 0.5% in January on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the final estimate, after falling by 4.1% in the previous month. Markets were hoping for the same 0.6% increase as was shown in the preliminary report. The trade balance surplus widened to A$10.14 billion in January from A$7.13 billion in December instead of narrowing to A$6.82 billion as economists had predicted. The Australian Industry Group Australian Performance of Services Index rose from 54.3 to 55.8 in February. An increase above the 50.0 level means that the sector has been expanding at an accelerating rate.
Yesterday, a report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed that gross domestic product grew by 3.1% in the December quarter on a seasonally adjusted basis. While it was a slowdown from the previous quarter’s 3.4% rate of growth, the actual increase was far bigger than the 2.5% predicted by experts. Year-on-year, GDP shrank by 1.1%, though. Following the better-than-expected reading, Westpac Banking Corporation updated its growth forecast for Australia in 2021, increasing it from 4% to 4.5%.
AUD/USD fell from 0.7721 to 0.7661 as of 16:40 GMT today but rebounded from the daily low of 0.7622. AUD/JPY dropped from 83.34 to 82.94. AUD/NZD was about unchanged at 1.0731 after rising to 1.0767 earlier.
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Original from: www.earnforex.com