Yesterday the Australian Dollar saw an immediate increase in value following the release of Australian employment data; however it failed to hold onto the ground it gained, giving it all back and falling heavily against all majors.
The official Unemployment Rate in Australia dropped surprisingly to 6.1% yesterday when economists were targeting a reduction from 6.4% to 6.3%. The economic expectation was that 15K jobs were added to economy during the month of August, however the Employment Change was a whopping 121K. Although the majority of jobs added to economy were part-time, the result was still a big beat and caused the AUD to move up about half of one percent against the majors within a matter of seconds of the announcement.
High-tier Chinese data was also announced yesterday relating to inflation and the Producer Price Index. The annualised CPI figure for China was expected to fall slightly from 2.3% to 2.2% and the result was that it fell further than expected, resulting in a printed figure of 2.0%. The PPI figure was also expected to decrease from -0.9% to -1.1% and it also was a miss, coming in at -1.2%. The strong Australian employment data seemed to overshadow the negative Chinese data on this occasion and the AUD held the gains for a few hours following the announcement. It then proceeded to give all the gains back and lost over half a percent against the majors.
Today Australia will release only lower-tier data, associated with Credit Card Purchases and Balances for the month of July. It has been quite a volatile week for the Australian Dollar with major shifts back and forth experienced. Although it appears to be a relatively quiet day for economic data releases today, the AUD is looking anything but stable.
The States will dominate the focus of investors and economists this evening when both Advance Retail Sales and the University of Michigan Confidence figures are released. The Greenback experienced a strong movement in it’s’ favour earlier and the week and will look to continue its’ rally against the AUD if positive data comes to fruition.