AUD/USD jumps to 8-week highs above 0.72 on upbeat China data
- AUD/USD rose to 0.7205 soon before press time, the highest level since Feb. 21.
- China's GDP steadied at 6.4 percent in the first quarter, while March industrial production and retail sales bettered estimates by a big margin.
- The upbeat data is boding well for the Aussie dollar, a proxy for China. The AUD/USD pair could extend gains further if the equities pick up a strong bid in response to China data.
The bid tone around the Aussie dollar seems to have strengthened in response to the better-than-expected China data dump.
As of writing, the AUD/USD pair is trading at a session high of 0.7200, having added more than 20 pips in the last few minutes.
The official data released at 02:00 GMT showed the world's second-largest economy expanded at an annualized rate of 6.4 percent in three months to March 2019, beating the expected growth rate of 6.3 percent, The economy had expanded 6.4 percent in the final quarter of 2018.
An above-forecast growth rate will likely strengthen the narrative that China's economy has bottomed out. As a result, riskier assets, including the AUD could remain better bid during the day ahead, more so, as both industrial production - a sign of external demand - and retail sales - a sign of domestic demand - released along with the GDP have bettered estimates.
Industrial production rose 8.5 percent year-on-year in March versus 5.3 percent in February, beating the expected rebound to 5.9 percent by a big margin. Meanwhile, retail sales rose 8.7 percent, surpassing the estimate of 8.4 percent.
Technical Levels
Author
Omkar Godbole
FXStreet Contributor
Omkar Godbole, editor and analyst, joined FXStreet after four years as a research analyst at several Indian brokerage companies.
