The December retail sales data was the focus, and its come in quite soft

A disappointing miss at -0.1% m/m

  • With the prior revised won also, to +0.1% m/m from +0.2% m/m

Retail Sales had picked up August to October last year

  • Following soft data in the previous 3 months
  • November 2016 was also disappointing

The bad result will be a negative input for the AUD. On the other hand, though, we did get a pick up in an inflation measure today, the Melbourne Institute Inflation (January): 0.6% m/m (prior 0.5%):

The core inflation measure (trimmed mean) moved back into the Reserve Bank of Australia target band (the band is 2-3%)

We also got positive job ads from ANZ's monthly survey today: Australia - ANZ Job ads (January) : +4.0% m/m (prior -1.9%)