Australia’s economy has been doing fairly well in recent months, and the latest report shows that its currency has benefited as well. This is mainly because of good news about job growth, which helped to push the Australian dollar higher against its U.S. counterpart, the U.S. dollar. Also, interest rates are expected to remain at their current level due to positive economic conditions, so the Australian dollar seems likely to have more gains in the near future.

Currency Market Update

The fluctuation of the AUD is primarily due to the United States and China's ongoing tariff conflict. Following a recent meeting between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, it was reported that the two agreed to call a temporary truce in the trade war, but there is little consensus on how long this will last. This caused an immediate spike in AUD, but it has since declined as investors see this pause as just another setback rather than an end to the dispute. One app maker, CocoaChina, announced they would be shutting down their apps by September 2nd due to the effect of U.S. tariffs on the company's products. More app makers are looking at taking similar measures while they wait for either the government or Apple (AAPL) to find a solution.

Introduction

What has happened with the Australian dollar in the last week? It has gone up and down - almost like a yo-yo. It is worth just over $0.80 now, and it is getting stronger too. At one point, it was worth around $0.78 before shooting up to $0.82. That’s not all though. There are other changes that have been happening too.

It went back down to $0.79 on Wednesday (2nd), then shot up again on Thursday (3rd) when its value reached $0.81 for a short time before sliding back down again on Friday (4th). It seems like we are due for another rise soon.

Economic Data from Last Week

I'm going to talk about an app maker called Scope. Recently, I took a look at their website and the past week has been interesting for them. Apparently, there was a currency crash in Vietnam which led to a spike in the US dollar against other currencies around the world. This is what we call an upward movement. The business implications are clear - if you're an exporter from Vietnam, your dollars just got much more valuable. In this case, it's best to watch the situation closely as it develops. As for scope, they might want to wait until the dust settles before trying anything risky like making major investments or hiring new employees.

Conclusion

The AUD/USD pair has traded in a $0.07/$0.08 range over the past week, which seems like quite a lot when the movements are that small. However, overall volatility for this particular currency pair is lower than it's been for a few months now. This may be because traders have priced in the new Reserve Bank of Australia governor into their positions and therefore have less speculation about potential moves by central banks this year.