Australia - February building approvals: -6.2% m/m (expected -5.0%)

Australian building approvals data for February

-6.2 % m/m ... miss

• expected -5.0% m/m, prior +17.1%

-3.1 % y/y

• expected +0.3% y/y, prior +12.0%

Trend measures show building approvals falling modestly but are staying around a very high level

... there is still plenty of work in the construction pipeline ... just not at boom levels as we had not too long ago (building permits surged in 2015, construction work followed in the subsequent two years ).

AUD got a bit of a pop - retail sales beat (see post on that, link down the bottom of this post)

---

For background on this volatile data point, I posted a preview earlier here:

• AUD traders - heads up also for building approvals data today - preview

And, out at the same time, retail sales data, which is more of a market focus:

• Australia February retail sales: +0.6% m/m(expected +0.3%)