Australian Trade Surplus Narrows, Aussie Halts Rally

The Australian dollar, together with other commodity currencies, halted its rally today. Fairly poor domestic macroeconomic data was not doing the Aussie any favors either.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that the trade balance surplus narrowed to A$8.75 billion in January from A$9.18 billion in December according to the preliminary estimate. What is worse, losses were registered in both exports and imports. Exports fell by 9% while imports declined by 10%. Meat exports logged the biggest loss, tumbling by 39%, while oilseed exports surged by 88%, demonstrating the biggest gains. As for export destinations, exports declined to the United States, Japan, China, and South Korea, while exports to India remained flat. As for imports, road vehicles logged the biggest loss (23%), while petroleum demonstrated the biggest gain (27%). As for destinations, imports from Japan, China, and the USA fell, imports from Germany were flat, while imports from Malaysia increased.
Year-on-year, the situation was a bit better as exports increased by 13%. Imports still declined, though, falling by 7%. Over the whole of 2020, the top exports were metalliferous ores, which rose by 14%, whereas coal was the biggest loser, falling by 32%, followed by petroleum, which fell by 30%. As for imports, the biggest gain was registered in office and ADP machines, which rose by 6%, followed by medical and pharmaceutical products, which rose by 5%. The biggest loser was petroleum, which sank by 41%.
AUD/USD inched down from 0.7913 to 0.7906 as of 12:33 GMT today. EUR/AUD was up from 1.5354 to 1.5373. AUD/JPY rose a bit from 83.14 to 83.20.
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Original from: www.earnforex.com