Investing.com - The Australian dollar was lower against its U.S. counterpart on Wednesday, as the greenback remained mildly supported after Tuesday's upbeat U.S. economic reports.
AUD/USD hit 0.7851 during late Asian trade, the session low; the pair subsequently consolidated at 0.7861, shedding 0.22%.
The pair was likely to find support at 0.7760, Monday's low and resistance at 0.7940, Tuesday's high.
The dollar found support after data on Tuesday showed that U.S. consumer prices rose 0.2% in February, in line with market expectations. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy costs was up 1.7% from the same month last year, the largest increase since November.
The uptick in underlying inflation indicated that the Federal Reserve would still have leeway to tighten monetary policy even with inflation running below target.
A separate report showed that U.S. new home sales jumped 7.8% to an annual unit rate of 539,000 last month, the highest level since February 2008, the Commerce Department said.
In addition, the preliminary reading of the U.S. manufacturing purchasing managers' index rose to 55.3 this month, the highest level since October, from 55.1 in February.
The Aussie was higher against the New Zealand dollar, with AUD/NZD rising 0.27% to 1.0320.
Also Wednesday, Statistics New Zealand reported that the country's trade surplus hit NZ$50 million last month from NZ$33 million in January, whose figure was revised from a previously estimated surplus of NZ$56 million.
Analysts had expected the trade surplus to widen to NZ$375 million last month.
Later in the day, the U.S. was to publish data on durable goods orders.