Aussie Struggles on the Forex Market

Australian dollar is struggling on the Forex market, especially against the US dollar. Concerns about what’s happening in Europe are affecting risk appetite, and sending Forex traders away from riskier assets like the Aussie and to low beta currencies like the US dollar and the Japanese yen.

Risk appetite is playing a big role in the Australian dollar’s performance today. Concerns that the Greece might actually leave the eurozone are increasing, and there are worries that Spain can’t handle its debt. This risk appetite is leading to losses by high beta currencies like the Australian dollar against low beta currencies like the US dollar and the Japanese yen. Australian dollar is, however, higher against the euro, since the euro is in such a bad state.

The Aussie’s case isn’t being helped by the situation with gold, either. Gold prices are falling right now, and the Australian dollar is a commodity currency that derives a significant amount of support from the precious metal. Aussie also gets help from China, since Australia is one of China’s major trading partners. However, China hasn’t been seeing such stellar growth recently. The result is that Aussie is having trouble finding support against some of its counterparts.

At 13:12 GMT AUD/USD is down to 0.0082 from the open at 1.0019. EUR/AUD is down to 1.2859 from the open at 1.2869. AUD/JPY is down to 79.59 from the open at 80.18.