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Australia Dollar Rises to Four-Month High on Better-Than-Expected Job Data
Australia’s dollar rose to a four- month high against the U.S. currency after a government report showed employers added more jobs than economists forecast and the jobless rate fell.
The Aussie, as the currency is nicknamed, strengthened against all of its 16 most-traded counterparts as the report spurred traders to increase bets the Reserve Bank of Australia will resume raising interest rates at its next meeting. The New Zealand dollar dropped against the Australian currency after figures showed the smaller nation’s manufacturing sales slumped to a 10-year low in the three months through June.
The employment figures were “very, very strong and it means the Aussie will test resistance,” said Richard Grace, chief currency strategist in Sydney at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the nation’s largest lender. “There’s certainly an upside risk in the Aussie here. The RBA will do more rate hikes before the end of this year.” Resistance is an area on a chart where sell orders may be clustered.
Australia’s dollar advanced 0.9 percent to 92.63 U.S. cents as of 11:40 a.m. in New York from 91.82 in New York yesterday, after rising to 92.77, the strongest level since April 30. The currency gained 0.8 percent to 77.59 yen.
The New Zealand dollar fell 0.2 percent to NZ$1.2731 per Australian dollar. The kiwi fell 0.6 percent to 72.71 cents.
Australia’s currency gained after the statistics bureau said the number of people employed in the nation rose by 30,900 in August, exceeding the 25,000 increase forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists. The jobless rate declined to 5.1 percent from 5.3 percent in July, the report showed.
New Zealand’s manufacturing sales excluding inflation, a measure comparable to figures used in the gross domestic product calculation, declined 1.8 percent from the first quarter, Statistics New Zealand said in a statement in Wellington today. Sales excluding the meat and dairy industries fell 3.6 percent.
To contact the reporters on this story: Yoshiaki Nohara in Tokyo at ynohara1@bloomberg.net; Catarina Saraiva in New York at asaraiva5@bloomberg.net
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