Investing.com - The Australian rose to three-week highs against its U.S. counterpart on Thursday, after upbeat Australian trade balance data, while the New Zealand dollar continued to hover near a 16-month peak as sentiment on the greenback remained fragile.
AUD/USD rose 0.29% to 0.7694, the highest since August 18.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics earlier reported that the trade deficit narrowed to A$2.410 billion in July from A$3.250 billion in June, whose figure was revised from a previously estimated deficit of A$3.195 billion.
Analysts had expected the trade deficit to narrow to A$2.750 billion in July.
NZD/USD edged up 0.19% to trade at 0.7463, not far from Wednesday’s 16-month high of 0.7487.
Meanwhile, sentiment on the greenback remained vulnerable after downbeat U.S. employment data published last Friday crushed expectations for an upcoming rate hike by the Federal Reserve.
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 94.88, close to the previous session’s one-and-a-half week low of 94.67.