Australian dollar weaker on poor data

Financial and commodity markets analytics

The Australian dollar has continued its losses today after weak retail sales fan trade balance figures had investors worried about the state of the economy.

The Australian dollar finished off the day at US76.87c down from US77.84c yesterday.

The retail sales figure in Australia came in at 0.0% against analysts’ expectations of 0.4% while the trade balance figure blew out to $3.89 billion, the highest ever recorded.

The Australian dollar was hit with a double whammy, which had traders running for the exits according to Westpac chief currency strategist Robert Rennie,

“We expected to see a poor trade deficit number but didn’t expect to see one as bad as that,” he said.

“On top of that we had softer retail sales as well.”

 “That contribution in the first quarter was probably statistical in nature and has very largely and significantly unwound in today’s data and we’re also seeing signs of softer discretionary retail spending as well,” he said.

“Neither of these pieces of data are particularly good news and the Australian dollar has softened because of it.”

The will now focus on the release today of the non-farm payrolls data from the US where investors are expecting a good number following on from Thursday’s healthy jobless claims figure which may see the Aussie dollar dink even further.