Hi All
Please find this weeks currency update below
A difficult but by no means disastrous week for the Aussie left it at the back end of the field. It lost half a cent to the pound and the US dollar.
Wednesday was a difficult day for the Australian dollar. At roughly the same time the Australian consumer price index data showed inflation slowing to 2.4% and China's manufacturing sector purchasing managers' index fell by half a point to 47.7. The inflation number was bad for the Aussie because it made lower interest rates more likely. The Chinese PMI was bad because a slowdown in Chinese manufacturing means reduced demand for Australian minerals and energy exports from its biggest customer.
Sterling's performance was tepid despite the UK economy expanding by 0.6% in the second quarter of the year. Though the figure was double that of the first quarter, it was exactly as investors had expected; because of that, they sold the pound.
Moving into this week, the Aussie lost ground overnight taking the GBP/AUD back to the highs we saw a few weeks ago this is in reaction to Glenn Stephens (Governer of the RBA) speaking overnight, he said second-quarter inflation data suggests there’s still room to lower interest rates if required and that he wouldn’t be surprised if the currency dropped further.
The Australian dollar dropped as traders added to bets the RBA will reduce the benchmark rate by a quarter percentage point at next week’s meeting,