The Australian and New Zealand Dollars finished mixed last week with the Aussie showing weakness and the Kiwi closing higher.

The AUD/USD settled at .7694, down 0.0016 or -0.21% and the NZD/USD closed the week at .7231, up 0.0020 or +0.28%.

Australian News

In Australia, the Reserve Bank of Australia Meeting Minutes showed the central bank is not in a hurry to raise interest rates due to concerns over housing, consumer credit and low wages.

The Australian Employment Change showed the economy added 17.5K jobs in February, below the 19.8K estimate. The previous month’s figure was revised down to 12.5K. The Unemployment Rate rose 5.6%, above the 5.5% estimate.

New Zealand News

In New Zealand, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand kept its Official Cash Rate unchanged at the record low of 1.75 percent for the ninth straight meeting, as widely expected, saying modest interest rates would help spur economic growth.

The only difference between Wednesday’s RBNZ statement and the previous one was that it dropped any reference to the New Zealand Dollar in the latest one, probably because the NZD has been relatively stable.

In summary, the RBNZ presented an optimistic tone on the global economy but noted that international pressures are beginning to build and developed world monetary policies are becoming less stimulatory.

“CPI inflation is expected to weaken further in the near term due to softness in food and energy prices and adjustments to government charges…Over the medium term, CPI inflation is forecast to trend upwards towards the midpoint of the target range. Longer-term inflation expectations are well anchored at 2 percent,” the RBNZ said, in its statement.

U.S. News

In the U.S., the Federal Reserve raised rates for the sixth time since the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) began hiking rates off near-zero in December 2015. The widely expected move put the benchmark funds rate at a target of 1.5 percent to 1.75 percent.

The Fed also upgraded its economic forecast, and dropped hints that the path of rate hikes could be more aggressive. The market currently expects three hikes for 2018, and that remained the baseline forecast, but at least one more increase was added in the following two years. The fact that traders were pricing in a 38-percent chance of four rates hikes probably led to dollar weakness.

Fed officials raised their forecast for 2018 GDP growth from 2.5 percent in December to 2.7 percent, and increased the 2019 expectation from 2.1 percent to 2.4 percent.

Inflation expectations changed little. The 2018 forecast remains just 1.9 percent for both core and headline inflation.