Dovish Fed boosts Aussie dollar

Financial and commodity markets analytics

The Australian dollar has soared in late trading today after the latest interest rate decision from the USA Federal Reserve and a dovish statement sent the US dollar reeling against major currencies.

At 8.36pm (GMT) the Aussie dollar was trading at US75.55c up from a low of US74.15c earlier in the day.

The US FED in their latest meeting, decided to keep rates on hold at 0.5 percent after lifting rates in December which was widely expected by the market.

The big news came in the following monetary speech 30 minutes later where they mentioned that the amount of rate hikes this year would be significantly less than they had mentioned at their previous meeting.

Members of the Central bank now predict that there will be only 2 rate hikes this year instead of 4, siting lower than expected inflation, and economic growth which has been revised down from 2.3 percent to 2.1 percent.

Although the tone of the statement was pretty dovish they left the door open for policy changes should the economic situation improve which many believe that only 1 more interest rate hike this year is not a done deal.