Becalmed Australian Dollar May Need Left-Field Impetus

Fundamental Australian Dollar Forecast: Neutral

• This isn’t a week replete with top-line Australian economic data. Unusually, there are none.
• That will probably leave investors to gnaw old themes
• Which in turn will probably mean that the currency remains where it is

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The Australian Dollar market may be stuck with familiar themes this week.

That’s because the economic data schedule is unusually but completely bereft of first-tier Australian numbers. It’s also rather short of the kind of heavyweight international figures which could send cross-market ripples the Aussie’s way.

So the currency is likely to remain in its becalmed state unless something unexpected comes storming out of left field, a possibility we can of course never fully discount.

But to stick with what we might call “known knowns”, we learned last week that monetary-policy makers at the Reserve Bank of Australia were relatively upbeat on Australia’s chances in a recovering global economy at their last meeting. However, they were also resolutely fretful about Aussie consumers’ indebtedness and as worried as ever about the effects of a strong currency on the domestic economy.

Neither of these worries are in any way new. Both crop up on the RBA’s downside-risk list with metronomic regularity. We also learned that, while Australian employment growth was better than forecast in July according to official figures, there was a worrying lurch lower for full-time positions which took some gloss off the headline.

But there has been enormous volatility in the full-time/part-time breakdown in recent months, to the point where it would hardly shock the markets to see July’s loss of 20,000 or so full-time workers fully made good in August. Still, for now question marks glower over the quality of job creation if not its quantity.

So where does this leave the Australian Dollar? Well, probably once again caught between a market which would quite like to buy it, assuming risk appetite doesn’t take another battering, and a central bank ever-more vocal about the baleful effects of currency strength.

That means it just must be a second, straight weekly neutral call.

--- Written by David Cottle, DailyFX Research

Contact and follow David on Twitter: @DavidCottleFX