Australian dollar down on US Fed decision

Financial and commodity markets analytics

The Australian dollar is trading lower today in anticipation of the latest interest rate decision from the US Federal reserve at 7.00pm (GMT)

At 5.45pm (GMT) the Aussie dollar was trading at US71.41c down from US71.96c in yesterday’s trade.

Around a third of analysts are predicting the US central bank will lift interest rates by 25 basis points which will mark the first move in 8 years since the global financial crisis, with extreme volatility expected in the US dollar against the major currencies including the Australian dollar.

One of the major reasons for the case of a rate hike is the jobs market, with the unemployment rate sitting at 5.1% while more than 12 million jobs were added to the economy since 2010 bringing average wage growth to 2.2%.

Some influential voices including the World Bank and the International monetary fund are against raising rates this month over concerns about the Chinese economy and the Eurozone crisis, with fears that an increase may derail the fragile economic recovery currently underway.

Whatever the Fed decide to do, this is gearing up to be one of the most important events of the year for the forex market that will have repercussions for the rest of 2015.