Bell FX Currency Outlook
A mixed bag of news and data out of the US and Europe over the weekend has seen the volatility in the AUD
continue.

Australia: Better than expected US payrolls data on Friday night saw the AUD strengthen, trading up towards USD0.9900, but it has since retreated back to its levels seen last week as downgrades of Italy and Spain by the ratings agency Fitch put a sour taste in trader's mouth.

This is also despite continued assurances that a deal will be made to ensure Europe's economy doesn't falter, after the German Chancellor Merkel and French President Sarkosy declared that they will do 'everything necessary'. A deadline has also been given for a solution to be agreed on; with November 3rd the chosen date. By this time a response will be in place to the immediate crisis and structural defects of the Euro-zone economy.

Locally this week our employment data is due to be released, with today's ANZ Job Advertisement data a pre-cursor to Thursday's results. Many are expecting that employment growth will continue to soften with the expectation that only 10,000 jobs were created in September.

Today's series isn't expected to have much of an impact on the AUD/USD as we expect that it will continue to closely follow equity markets and any offshore developments.

Majors: As mentioned above, the US payrolls data beat market expectations and gave investors hope that the US economy may be
showing some signs of improvement. The data showed that there were 103,000 jobs created in September which was much better than expectations of an increase of 60,000 jobs. To accompany the positive result for September there were also fairly impressive upward revisions for the previous two months.

Despite this result, US equity markets finished the week down with the S&P500 weaker by 0.8% and the DOW down 0.2% after the downgrade of Italy and Spain. When the announcement was made Fitch stated that the long-term outlook for both countries was
negative and citied that high debt and poor prospects for growth were the reasons behind the downgrade. Investors are expecting a fairly quiet trading session today as public holidays in the US, Japan and Canada see many financial markets closed tonight.

Economic Calendar
10 OCT AU ANZ Job Advertisements SEPT
EU Sentix Investor Confidence OCT
GE Imports / Exports AUG