Investing.com - The Australian and New Zealand dollars moved lower against their U.S. counterpart on Wednesday, after the release of relatively positive inflation data from Australia as investors remained cautious ahead of the Federal Reserve’s upcoming policy statement.
AUD/USD slid 0.32% to 0.7478.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics said the consumer price index rose 0.4% in the second quarter, in line with expectations and after a 0.2% fall in the three months to March.
Year-on-year, CPI gained 1.0% in the last quarter, compared to expectations for an increase of 1.1% and after a 1.3% rise in the first quarter.
The report also showed that trimmed mean CPI, which excludes the most volatile 30% of items, rose 0.5% in the second quarter, exceeding expectations for a 0.4% gain.
NZD/USD fell 0.28% to trade at 0.7034.
Meanwhile, investors awaited the Fed’s upcoming policy decision as a recent string of pbeat U.S. data continued to support expectations for a rate hike by the U.S. central bank in the near future.
While most investors expect the Fed to leave its monetary policy unchanged this week, it could give hints on the timing of future rate hikes.
The greenback found some support on Tuesday after data showed that U.S. new home sales rose by 3.5% to 592,000 units last month, beating expectations for a 1.6% advance.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was up 0.11% to 97.27, hovering close to Monday’s four-month high of 97.62.