Australian Dollar Gaining Despite Onslaught of Dismal Releases

The Australian dollar is up against majors despite a slew of gloomy data releases in early Sydney trading.

John Hydeskoy, analyst with Danske Bank said the Australian dollar's rise can be attributed to an increase in risk appetite, after last week stock markets "burst into euphoria, bringing on the rare sight of double-digit daily gains. This put the riskier currencies like the AUD, NZD and NOK back on investors' wish lists," he said.

Nicholas Jonas, strategist with Suncorp agreed, and said the Australian dollar "continues to be traded off equity market sentiment."

Sydney's ASX 200 is currently up 112.40 points to 4130.40.

Early in the trading session, Australian markets first received the AiG performance of manufacturing indicator, which hit its lowest level of 2008, at 40.4 in October.

TD Securities' inflation gauge revealed prices fell by 0.2% in October, the first decline in the survey since February 2006.

Financial firm ANZ released their measure of job advertisements for October, which revealed Australian jobs ads declined 5.9%.

Retail sales were released simultaneously, growing 0.2% month over month in September, while the seasonally adjusted figure fell 1.1% against expectations for a 0.5% fall.

Housing prices for the third quarter were also released simultaneously, revealing a quarterly decline of 1.8% in prices against expectations for a 0.5% fall.

Despite all this dismal data, Su-Lin Ong, economist with RBC Capital Markets said there was "limited reaction from the $A."

Markets are awaiting the release of the Reserve Bank of Australia's cash rate tomorrow, expected to be cut by 50 basis points to 5.50%.

The euro was down 0.0057 to 1.9004 against the Australian dollar.

The Australian dollar was up 0.0070 to 0.6749 against the greenback.

The Canadian dollar was down 0.0018 to 1.2335 against the Australian dollar.

The Australian dollar was up 0.8850 to 66.625 against the yen.

The Australian dollar was up 0.0002 to 1.1461 against the New Zealand dollar.