Investing.com - The Aussie held slight gains in Asia on Friday on house prices data from China that could signal a knock-on effect for commodity demand.
AUD/USD traded at 0.7633, up 0.08%, while USD JPY changed hands at 104.11, up 0.16%
In China, house prices data for September rose at an 11.2% pace, beating the previous gain on 9.2% year-on-year.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, rose 0.09% to 98.38.
Overnight, the dollar bounced back to a fresh seven-month high against the other majors currencies on Thursday, after slipping briefly, as markets digested comments by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, as well as a string of mixed U.S. data. The ECB left interest rates unchanged at record lows of zero and held its quantitative easing program unchanged at €80 billion per month.
The U.S. National Association of Realtors reported on Thursday that existing home sales increased by 3.2% in September to 5.47 million units from 5.30 million in August. The consensus forecast was for a 0.4% advance to 5.35 million units.
The data came after the U.S. Department of Labor said initial jobless claims increased by 13,000 in the week ending October 15 to 260,000 from the previous week’s total of 247,000. Analysts had expected jobless claims to rise by 4,000 to 250,000 last week. Expectations for a December rate hike remained high, with markets currently pricing in 73.9% chance of a hike, according to Investing.com's Fed Rate Monitor Tool.
In addition, the Philadelphia Federal Reserve said its business conditions index came in at 9.7 this month, down from 12.8 in September. Economists had expected a reading of 5.3 this month.
Draghi said the central bank would wait for updated economic forecasts in December to make a decision and that it had not discussed either tapering the size of its asset purchase program or extending the horizon of the purchases.