Australian employment figures were released yesterday and it was a mixed result. A few seconds after the Employment Change figure of -4.8k was posted, the AUD dropped close to half a percent instantly against most of the majors. The saving grace of the announcement was that the Full Time Employment Change figure was a positive 22.2K, an increase from the 13.8K jobs created last month. The Australian Unemployment Rate remained unchanged at 5.8%. After the markets processed this information, the AUD recovered slightly against most of the majors, with the exception being the New Zealand Dollar.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand announced their Rate Decision yesterday and they increased rates from 3.0% to 3.25%. This allowed the ‘Kiwi’ to have one of its biggest gains in a day against the ‘Aussie’ this year, moving up approx 1.5% and abolishing the gains that the AUD had made against the NZD over the previous few days. Lower-tier economic data associated with Food Prices and Non Resident Bond Holdings is due out of New Zealand today.
Today the AUD will look for support via Chinese data relating to Retail Sales and Industrial Production. Economic forecasts suggest that both pieces of data will be quite strong and the announcements made this afternoon will likely determine the direction of ‘Aussie’ as we head into the weekend. Further Chinese data to be released on Sunday will also be influential to the Aussie Dollar.
Looking forward, it appears as though the most important market mover for the AUD-NZD currency pairing in the short term will occur next Thursday morning when the New Zealand GDP figures are publicised. In the meantime the tug-of-war between the Aussie and Kiwi looks set to continue in the form of minor gains back and forth.