Australian dollar under pressure

Financial and commodity markets analytics

The Australian dollar threatened to break below the US73c mark earlier today before recovering some losses later in the trading session.

At 6.57(GMT) the Aussie dollar was trading at US73.50c up from US73.14c in yesterday’s trade.

The catalyst for the weakness in the Australian dollar was weak data out of China with imports coming in at -10.9 percent which caused Australia’s biggest export, Iron ore to tumble over 5 percent.

The Australian dollar has now tumbled nearly 10 percent after threatening to break through the US78c mark just over a week ago before the Reserve Bank of Australia unexpectedly cut interest rates

The market is also pricing in another cut by December which is likely to keep the currency under pressure for the foreseeable future.

Also expected to weigh on the Aussie dollar is further weakness in commodity prices with Iron ore expected to decline further as the Chinese government cracks down on speculators which have been blamed for the recent price rises.