The Australian dollar has reached February highs against the USD last week. This was because of both the fundamentals and the negative attitude towards the greenback which allowed the other currencies to grow in value.
The Reserve Bank of Australia meeting statement was released today, and it says the information coming from Australia and other economies is mainly positive. The conditions of the global economy system keep improving, which allows the RBA keep the expectations unchanged.
The business conditions have also been improving in Australia during 2017, while weak consumer growth may add some risks to it. Household consumer spending is limited, and neither job growth nor the opportunities for rising wages can currently help it.
The RBA is somewhat cautious about the inflation. The Australian economy is strengthening, and the consumer price index will probably rise, but not very eagerly.
As for the figures, the RBA forecasts the GDP at 3% and the inflation at a bit higher than 2%. With the AUD rate so volatile, GDP and inflation are unlikely to increase sharply.
The overall RBA’s economic outlook is quite neutral. The interest rate is very likely to remain unchanged at 1.5%, with no economic rises or falls expected.
Technically, AUD/USD on D1 is looking somewhat mixed. Both the overall major trend and the short term one are ascending, while the latest bounce off the trend channel was unable to trigger a new uptrend impulse. Current uptrend target is around the upper channel boundary at 0.8450, with the support at 0.7805. If this support gets broken out, this may cause a downtrend with a target at around 0.7500.
