Investing.com – The Australian Dollar depreciated against the dollar following the release of a slew of China data on Monday.
China’s economy expanded by 6.7% in the second quarter, its slowest pace since 2016, although the growth is still above the government’s target of “about 6.5%” growth for the year.
While the official GDP readings were largely in line with market expectations, the country’s industrial output grew 6% year-on-year in June, which was slower than the expected 6.5%. The weak industrial production was cited as the catalyst for the selling in the Aussie dollar, which is usually seen as a proxy for China.
The AUD/USD pair traded at 0.7412 by 12:30AM ET (04:30 GMT), after clocking a high of 0.7436 earlier today.
Retail sales on the other hand rose 9% year-on-year in June, beating the general consensus of a 8.8% increase, although its impact on the forex markets seemed to be limited.
Elsewhere, the USD/CNY pair slipped 0.03% to 6.6889. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) set the yuan reference rate at 6.6758 on Monday versus Friday's day's fix of 6.6727.
The U.S. Dollar Index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies, was down 0.03% at 94.41 on Monday.
The yen was little changed as the USD/JPY pair edged 0.03% higher to 112.45, hovering near a six-month high of 112.79 set on Friday.
U.S. President Donald Trump's summit with his Russian counterpart in Helsinki later in the day will also be closely watched, as Trump played down expectations over the weekend for the upcoming talks.
“No matter how well I do at the Summit, if I was given the great city of Moscow as retribution for all of the sins and evils committed by Russia over the years, I would return to criticism that it wasn’t good enough,” Trump said in a series of tweets.