FX Daily Wrap Up

Aussie Stall?

With so much news focused on the EUR / USD pair it is time to look a bit down, and under. Australia's October employment numbers came in at 32.1, far lower than expected. After having grown for 8-consecutive months, adding a total of 254k jobs, this month was the largest fall since September 2005. Full-time jobs fell heavily (-48.6 thousand) while part-time jobs actually rose (+16.6 thousand). The unemployment rate came in at 4.6%, which is an all-time low.

Skipping across the oceans.

The Bank of England raised its benchmark rate 25 basis points to 5.00%. Clearly, the central bank is confident that that the UK economy can absorb the additional rate hikes, but time will only tell if the central bank's hawkish stance at the time of clear evidence of global economic slowdown may in fact be a case of too much tightening too soon. The GBP / USD hit a low today of 1.8975 before a rally pushed to the day's high of 1.9085 and finished out the US session almost where it started at 1.9045. XPRESSTRADE Analyst David Hilgeman