The Australian Dollar strengthened against its American counterpart, following the release of the Australian trade balance report. The AUD/USD currency pair gained 12 base points, or 0.15%, reaching the intraday’s high of 0.7838. But soon after, the pair was seen coming back to the 0.7826 area.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed on Thursday that January Australian trade surplus was much larger than expected. Instead of the forecasted 0.21B surplus, Australia’s seasonally adjusted trade balance increased to 1.06B, compared to a deficit of –1.15B recorded in the prior month. One of the reasons for the better-then-expected data was a sharp decline in imports.
