Risk-Sensitive Australian Dollar at Actual Risk as Powell’s Speech Sours Market Sentiments Towards It.

US stocks sink after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell holds firm on rate hike outlook.

The AUD may fall against the USD today as Asia-Pacific traders take in comments from the Federal Reserve Chair on Friday. Mr. Jerome Powell firmly stated that rate hikes would likely continue, causing overnight index swaps and Fed funds futures to hike prices more aggressively, affecting the AUD/USD currency pair. The implications for US equities were extremely negative, thus, sending major indexes deeply lower.

Asia-Pacific markets might feel the weight of Powell’s actions in today’s trading as Asian equity futures are pointing to a lower open, and the US Dollar is moving higher after gaining last week. The Australian Dollar sank against the USD during New York trading hours. Thus, trimming most of the AUD/USD’s early-week gains. The Australian Dollar was performing well up until then, with copper and iron ore prices helping the currency.

The announced new measures by Chinese policymakers helped to brighten market sentiment across the APAC region last week, explaining the lift across base metal prices. Today also offers sentiment-shifting data release, with the preliminary print for Australia’s July retail sales set to cross the wires. Analysts expect a 0.3% month-over-month increase, up from 0.2% in June. A beat on that print would bode well for AUD.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), China’s industrial performance declined in July. The decline was due to the factory closures following the Zero-Covid policy.

Later this week, China’s manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) from the NBS is due out.