Investing.com - The Australian dollar climbed to one-month highs against its U.S. counterpart on Wednesday, after relatively positive Australian data as comments by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen sent the greenback broadly lower.
AUD/USD hit 0.7900 during late Asian trade, the pair's highest since January 28; the pair subsequently consolidated at 0.7882, advancing 0.66%.
The pair was likely to find support at 0.7781, the low of February 23 and resistance at 0.8026, the high of January 28.
In a report, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said that construction work done slipped 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2014, confounding expectations for a 1.2% decline. The third quarter's figure was revised to a 2.8% drop from a previously estimated 2.2% fall.
A separate report showed that Australia's wage price index rose 0.6% in the last quarter, in line with expectations and after a 0.6% gain in the three months to September.
Elsewhere, data showed that the China HSBC Flash Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index rose to 50.1 this month from 49.7 in January, beating expectations for a decline to 49.5.
China is Australia's biggest export partner.
Meanwhile, the greenback remained under pressure after Fed Chair Yellen said it was "unlikely" that economic conditions would warrant an interest rate increase for "at least the next couple of FOMC meetings".
In prepared remarks during testimony to the Senate Banking Committee, Yellen added that if the economy keeps improving as the Fed expects it will modify its forward guidance, but emphasized that a modification of its language should not be read as indicating that a rate hike would automatically happen within a number of meetings.
On the economy, Yellen said growth was expected to be strong enough to result in a further gradual decline in the unemployment rate and added that while overseas risks remain "the recent decline in world oil prices could boost overall global economic growth more than we expect."
The Aussie was also higher against the euro, with EUR/AUD retreating 0.30% to 1.4437.
Later in the day, the U.S. was to release data on new home sales.