This week’s last session in Asia passed quite calmly. We didn’t witness any major macroeconomic publications, and all market attention was focused on Governor of Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Phillip Lowe. His statement, though interesting did not affect significantly the valuation of AUD markets. What Lowe said, and what awaits us on Friday, February 24th? You will find out about this in the review of the markets!
We would like the Australian dollar was cheaper, but hard to tell whether in this point is overvalued – Philip Lowe said yesterday (from european point of view). RBA Governor pointed to the high correlation between the national currency and commodity prices, stressing that if current trend in the commodity market continues, the AUD will also gain value.
These words were most important from the point of view of the foreign exchange market, which we could hear from Lowe. He also commented on the global economy, which in his opinion is now in a much better condition. Positive forecasts are also for Australia – RBA governor expects economic growth in the country will be around 3% in 2017. Reserve Bank of Australia also predicts that the inflation rate should no longer continue to fall but still requires close monitoring of macroeconomic data flowing.
AUD/USD for most of the Asian session remained in a fairly tight range of 0.7700 / 20. So far, the pair did not break consolidation:
What are we waiting for?
You can say – for the weekend. Today’s session, and especially the morning will not belong to the most interesting from the point of view of macroeconomic publications. At 10:00 am are scheduled insignificant readings of Italian reports on industrial sales and new orders in the sector. Half an hour later, the British will publish a report on changes in the number of mortgage contracts .
Slightly more interesting will be during the US session. Canadians will begin publishing its CPI for January. Forecasts for the index point to a likely increase in prices in the economy by 1.6% compared to the corresponding period a year ago. The base CPI should continue to shrink, although the dynamics of decline should be much lower (-0.1% vs. -0.3% previously).
At 16:00 we will know the indices of the University of Michigan (including index of consumer sentiment) and the change in the level of sales of real estate in the primary market.
