Australia: Renewed concerns over the outlook for global growth have spurred another sell off in the commodity currencies, sending the AUD back through USD0.8400 overnight. Today’s local session could prove to be interesting with the release of domestic retail sales and building approvals reports at 11.30am (Syd) and Chinese PMI data later this afternoon. The Chinese data is of particular interest, as any signs of weakness will only add to concerns over the strength of the Chinese economy. Due to Australia’s large reliance on exports of commodities to China, a weak result would add to the selling pressure on the AUD. Support is seen initially at the overnight low close to USD0.8380, with further support expected around USD0.8260. On the cross rates, the AUD has lost ground against the GBP, JPY and EUR but remains largely unchanged against the NZD.

Majors: Jobs data out in the US overnight was weaker than expected, with US employers adding 13,000 new jobs in the month of June. Economists had been predicting a figure closer to 60,000 new jobs. Recent US data releases have been on the weak side fuelling concern over the strength of the US economic recovery. The news was a little better out of Europe with the ECB stating that it will loan 132 bio euros to banks in its three month tender. This was much lower than the figure of 300 bio euros that some analysts had been predicting. However the news out of Europe was not all good with Moody’s putting Spain on a negative credit watch. US equity markets were softer overnight with the Dow down 1% and the Nasdaq off by 1.2%. The price of crude oil also came off overnight after a report was released showing there had been an unexpected increase in US gasoline inventories.

Australia China Retail sales