Investing.com - The Australian dollar was steady against its U.S. counterpart on Wednesday, while the New Zealand dollar edged higher but gains were expected to remain limited as global growth concerns continued to weigh on sentiment.
AUD/USD was little changed at 0.7507.
Investors remained cautious after the International Monetary Fund downwardly revised its projection for global economic growth in 2016 to 3.1%, from the prior 3.2%, though expecting a rebound to 3.4% in 2017.
The IMF cut the U.S. growth forecast to 2.2% from 2.4%, but said the Brexit impact on the U.S. economy would be muted and explained that the reduction was due to weaker than expected first quarter gross domestic product.
NZD/USD added 0.14% to trade at 0.7065.
The commodity currencies found some support however, as oil prices moved higher on Wednesday after the American Petroleum Institute said crude stockpiles fell more-than-expected last week.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was steady at a four-month high of 97.11.