Currency Update: Yesterday we saw the release of January retail sales, which came out at 1.2%, much better than the forecast of 0.4%

Currency Update: Yesterday we saw the release of January retail sales, which came out at 1.2%, much better than the forecast of 0.4%. At the same time there was a big surprise to the upside in the trade balance for January. The market expected a surplus of $0.1b but the actual figure was $1.4b. This was driven by a 4% increase in exports while imports only rose 1%. December's trade surplus was also revised up from $468m to $591m. All this positive news saw the AUD jump from 0.8975 to 0.9030 on the announcement and continued to rally last night. The euro strengthened to a two-month high against the dollar with the ECB keeping rates on hold. In the US factory orders were slightly weaker than expected (-0.7% vs. -0.5 expected) but the USD weakness was more of reflection of the risk-on sentiment from Australia and Europe.