“The Australian and New Zealand currencies rose versus the yen after a survey of companies showed Chinese manufacturing expanded at the fastest pace in two years, brightening the outlook for commodity exports.
The South Pacific dollars advanced against their Japanese counterpart after the announcement by HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics for the preliminary reading of a Purchasing Managers’ Index for China beat analysts’ forecasts. The so- called Aussie weakened versus New Zealand’s dollar as signs of limited inflation in the larger economy caused traders to add to bets on the size of interest-rate cuts this year.
“We have seen a bounce back in the Australian and New Zealand dollars due to the Chinese PMI data,” said Tim Waterer, a senior foreign-exchange dealer at CMC Markets in Sydney. “The fact that we’ve seen another improvement in Chinese activity lends itself to support a currency like the Aussie, which is hypersensitive to all things Chinese.”
Australia’s dollar rose 0.4 percent to 93.94 yen as of 4:52 p.m. in Sydney. It fell 0.4 percent to $1.0517 and slid 0.4 percent to NZ$1.2473. New Zealand’s currency gained 0.9 percent to 75.32 yen and added 0.1 percent to 84.31 U.S. cents.
The preliminary reading of the PMI Index was 51.9 in January, according to a statement from HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics today. That compares with the 51.5 final reading for December and the 51.7 median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.
China is Australia’s largest trading partner and New Zealand’s second-largest export destination.
