The Australian currency opened lower Tuesday morning after a night of lacklustre trade as the investment community look ahead of the US central bank's assessment of the American economy.

At 7am east-coast time, the local unit was trading at 91.64 US cents, down from yesterday's finish of 91.82 US cents. The Aussie was also buying 78.77 yen, 69.27 euro cents and 57.6 pence.

Since 5pm, the domestic dollar traded from 91.55 to 92.06 US cents.

The US Federal Reserve is predicted to leave interest rates at historic lows during their meeting on Tuesday night, Australian time but could signal plans to restart some stimulus programs, such as its purchase of mortgage-backed securities.

Bank of New Zealand currency strategist Mike Jones said overnight trading was quiet as investors await the next ruling on monetary policy.

"We have a feeling financial markets last night (reflected) a bit of a calm before the storm, so trading overall was relatively lacklustre," Mr Jones said.

"The Australian dollar drifted lower late in the evening. That was driven by a mild squaring up of US dollar short positions, so that tended to knock most of the major currencies lower including the Aussie dollar," he said.

"Investors are a little bit wary of carrying those positions through to the Fed meeting tommorow given that people aren't really sure what's going to happen at that meeting and it could cause quite a bit of volatility in currencies."

According to Mr Jones, the announcement from the US central bank would determine the Australian currency's direction for the rest of the week.

"The Fed's position tomorrow is going to be the benchmark in terms of how the US dollar performs for the rest of the week and hence how the Australian dollar performs."