Australian Dollar weakens broadly today and is trading as the worst performing one for today. The Aussie is partly dragged down by poor Chinese data. It’s own data provide no help too.
Wage Price Index rose only 0.5% qoq in Q1, below expectation of 0.6% qoq. ABS Chief Economist Bruce Hockman said: “Annual wages in seasonally adjusted terms grew 2.3 per cent for the third quarter in a row. The main contributors to growth over the quarter were regularly scheduled wage rises in the Health care and social assistance and Education and training industries, as was the case in the previous March quarter.”
Westpac Consumer Sentiment rose 0.3% to 101.3 in May, up from 100.7. Westpac noted that easing bias was delivered by RBA at last week’s meeting, with growth and inflation forecasts lowered to “barely acceptable” levels. More importantly, such forecasts are based on market pricing for a full rate cut for. Westpac maintained that the tensions between strong labor market and weak GDP will be resolved over the next few months. And the case of August RBA cut would become clear.
AUD/USD is on track to 100% projection of 0.7295 to 0.7003 from 0.7205 at 0.6913 with today’s decline. We’ll pay attention to downside acceleration should this level be broken firmly.
