The Australian Dollar is back to falling. Overview for 14.03.2019

On Thursday, AUDUSD is retreating; market players weren’t impressed by the Chinese statistics. 

The Australian Dollar is falling against the USD on Thursday. The current quote for the instrument is 0.7067.

In the morning, China published several macroeconomic reports. Although the numbers were rather mixed, they are still very important for the Aussie, because China remains Australia’s key trade and economic partner despite business conflicts they’ve had recently.

The Retail Sales in China was +8.2% y/y in January, the same as the month before. The Unemployment Rate, however, increased up to 5.3% after being 4.9% in December. 

The Industrial Production added only 5.3% y/y in January, which is much worse than previous and expected readings (+5.7% y/y and +5.5% y/y respectively). The current reading is the lowest over the last 17 years. The sector experiences hard times because of both weak domestic and external demand due to complicated trade relations with the USA. Increased import duties on Chinese goods are still in effect, thus making them unprofitable. 

These negative numbers were somehow compensated by the Fixed Asset Investment, which added 6.1% ytd/y, meaning that the Chinese government investing money in areas that may support the country’s economy. First of all, this is about highways and railroads. 

The Aussie retreated in the morning, although one should be very careful when it comes to the winter numbers from China: there are a lot of holidays in winter here, that’s why the data shouldn’t be considered objective.