The British pound is little changed against the Australian dollar on Thursday.
- Aussie hampered by trade tensions (US considering new EU tariffs)
- US jobless claims miss, durable goods data beat expectations
- UK CBI retailing -37 vs. -38
- Pound-Aussie exchange rate is -0.03% this week
GBP/AUD was down by 3 pips (-0.2%) to 1.8072 as of 4pm GMT.
The currency pair was directionless, trading in a choppy range between 1.805 and 1.81. Yesterday it rose just 0.09%.
GBP: UK CBI Retailing improves slowly in June
For the time being, Sterling and the Aussie are both being treated as equally ‘risky’ versus the US dollar, which is the preferred haven. The UK has been hard hit by the pandemic and is just reopening now, meaning the effects of easing lockdown conditions cannot yet be felt. Australia on the other hand is dealing with a resurgence of cases after having reopened almost fully over a month ago.
The only UK economic data of note was UK June CBI retailing which reported sales of -37 versus -38 expected and -50 in May. The data shows an improvement but remains downtrodden. It’s worth noting though that the surveys were collected before the announcement from UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson about the new easing to begin July 4.
AUD: Aussie rebounds as durable goods order improve
Some better economic data from the United States limited earlier concern over the damage to global growth prospects from a new EU – US trade war and rising coronavirus cases in the United States.
Texas reported another steep rise in hospitalisations on Thursday. Texas Governor signed an executive order today to suspend elective surgeries in counties with large increases in coronavirus cases.
There was an influx of US economic data to judge the state of the economic recovery. May US durable goods orders were +15.9% versus +10.5% expected. US initial jobless claims ending June 20 was 1.58 million versus 1.32 million expected. A third reading of US GDP was unchanged at -5.0%.
