It’s Those Carry Trades Again

Today was a nasty day for the Australian dollar. Those carry trades have forced investors to continue to sell down and unwind their carry trade exposures in their forex holdings due to the continued bearish market sentiment. It was interesting to note that government bonds continued to rally as nervousness across the region encouraged safe-haven buying. This morning the Australian dollar bought around 77.74 cents down from the 78.53 cents we saw last Friday. So, it was a correction of the markets? Don’t you just love it when the financial journos and the other market commentary people always pin it down to the correction the market needed? Anyway, the Australian dollar was clearly still being affected by the risk aversion procedures taken by the players in the market that started last week and it seems that it is affecting markets globally. Even Australian local economic reports didn’t even have any influence the markets at all: Aussie company profits rose 2.5 percent in the fourth quarter and inventories rose by 0.1 percent breaking the two quarter decline. On Wednesday the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) will issue their fourth quarter national accounts data Wednesday at 0030 GMT or 1130 local Sydney time.