Australia: Yesterday saw the release of the Australian Retail Sales data for July which came in at +0.5%, well above the markets expectations of a 0.3% gain. Also released was the Australian Capital Expenditure Survey for Q2, which reported a rise of 4.9% beating expectations of a 4% gain. There was also a large revision for the previous quarter up 7.7%. Also released yesterday was the the RBA’s Commodity Prices for August, reporting a rise of 0.4% for the month of August taking the index up 25% year on year.

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The AUD has been seeing some big interest from sovereign funds Asian Central Banks and as the rest of the world starts to realise theAustralian story this will continue to support the AUD. In Asia yesterday the Chinese PMI number picked up to 50.9 in August from 50.7 in July, showing that the manufacturing sector remains strong despite concerns of another global recession. Base metals were weaker overnight; copper was down 1.4%, nickel lost 2.0% and aluminium fell 0.6%.

Gold was also down slightly, trading at US$ 1,829.10 per ounce while crude was firmer trading at US$88.93 a barrel. There is no local data due to be released today, and with the US Non-farm payrolls numbers for August due out tonight, it’s expected that the market will be fairly quiet ahead of these results.

Majors: In the US overnight equity markets finished weaker despite trading higher early in the session following some positive data releases.The Dow finished down 1% while the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 ended down 1.3% and 1.2% respectively. The US ISM manufacturing data for August came in 50.6 better than the markets expectation of a rise to 48.5. The US Initial Jobless Claims data for the week ending 26th August came in at 409k slightly better than the market expected and down from 421k last week. While the US construction spending for July fell 1.3% the net upward revisions to earlier months was +3.6%.

Economic Calendar
EU Euro-zone PPI JUL
UK Nationwide House Prices JUL
US Change in Non-farm payrolls AUG
US Unemployment Rate AUG