{"id":48402,"date":"2014-03-12T07:23:34","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T11:23:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/forex-news\/?p=48402"},"modified":"2014-03-12T07:23:34","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T11:23:34","slug":"australian-dollar-drops-on-weak-consumer-sentiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2014\/03\/12\/australian-dollar-drops-on-weak-consumer-sentiment\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian Dollar Drops on Weak Consumer Sentiment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By <u><a href=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/L42ObV\" target=\"_blank\">HY Markets Forex Blog<\/a><\/u><\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>The Australian dollar declined for a fourth day against the greenback on Thursday after reports from Westpac revealed consumer sentiment dropped to its lowest since May last year while home loans dropped.<\/p>\n<p>The Australian dollar traded 0.18% lower at $0.8958 at the time of writing, following the release, after trading close to $0.8967 earlier in the session.<span id=\"more-3605\"><\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Australian Dollar &#8211; Weak Sentiment<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Australia\u2019s consumer sentiment index dropped 0.7% to 99.5 points in March, the lowest level since May last year and compared to the previous reading of 100.2 points seen in February, according to the Westpac-Melbourne Institute Consumer Sentiment gauge. A figure below the 100 mark indicates more consumers were pessimistic than optimists.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe degree of concern around jobs is very high,\u201d\u00a0Westpac senior economist Mathew Hassan said in the statement on Wednesday. \u201cWe retain our view that rates will remain unchanged over the first half of 2014, but with two further 25bp rate cuts in the second half.\u201dHe also added &#8220;More recent falls though have had a very clear theme centering on\u00a0a sharp loss of confidence in the economic outlook and escalating job-loss fears.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The latest figures from the job market revealed unemployment climbed to a ten-year high of 6% in January, while the participation rate came in at an eight-year low of 64.5%. The labour market report for February \u00a0is expected to be released on Thursday, with the jobless rate and participation rate forecasted to remain unchanged.<\/p>\n<p>The sub-index tracking consumer which tracks the views on the outlook conditions over the next year fell 4%, following the fall of 7.1% seen in February, reports from Westpac confirmed.<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">Home Loans<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Meanwhile in the housing sector, the number of loans granted to purchase or build homes was unchanged in January from the previous month, after it dropped by 3.3% from December, the statistics bureau said today.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><i>Visit<\/i><\/strong><b><i>\u00a0<\/i><\/b><b><i><a title=\"HY Markets\" href=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/1fxqljy\" target=\"_blank\">www.hymarkets.com \u00a0<\/a>\u00a0to find out more about our products\u00a0<\/i><\/b><strong><i>and start trading today with only $50 using the latest trading technology today<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/1g8h9f4\">Australian Dollar Drops on Weak Consumer Sentiment<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/L42ObV\">| HY Markets Official blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> Article provided by <strong><u><a href=\"http:\/\/ift.tt\/L42ObV\" target=\"_blank\">HY Markets Forex Blog<\/a><\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By HY Markets Forex Blog The Australian dollar declined for a fourth day against the greenback on Thursday after reports from Westpac revealed consumer sentiment dropped to its lowest since May last year while home loans dropped. The Australian dollar traded 0.18% lower at $0.8958 at the time of writing, following the release, after trading &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2014\/03\/12\/australian-dollar-drops-on-weak-consumer-sentiment\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Australian Dollar Drops on Weak Consumer Sentiment&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}