Investing.com - The Australian and New Zealand dollars slipped lower against their U.S. counterpart on Tuesday, as investors remained cautious ahead of the U.S. presidential election and as disappointing Chinese trade data weighed.
AUD/USD declined 0.32% to 0.7703, off Monday’s two-and-a-half week high of 0.7731.
The greenback remained supported after the FBI informed Congress over the weekend that it had "not changed its conclusions" on the private email server maintained by Hillary Clinton, adding to expectations that the Democratic candidate could win Tuesday’s election.
NZD/USD fell 0.20% to trade at 0.7328, just below the previous session’s more than one-month high of 0.7361.
Elsewhere, data earlier Tuesday showed that China’s trade surplus widened to $49.06 billion in October from $41.99 billion the previous month, disappointing expectations for a trade surplus of $51.70 billion.
The report showed that China’s imports declined by an annualized rate of 1.4% last month, while exports dropped 7.3%.
China is Australia’s biggest export partner and New Zealand’s second biggest export partner.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was down 0.08% at 97.70, just off Monday’s four-day high of 97.89.