Investing.com - The U.S. dollar remained unchanged, while the Aussie dollar slipped on Friday after data showed China’s trade surplus with the U.S. hit a record high in September.
The U.S. dollar index that tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies was unchanged at 94.69 by 12:45 AM ET (04:45 GMT).
The U.S. dollar traded near its lowest level in nearly two weeks against its major peers as declining U.S. treasury yields and further losses on Wall Street soured sentiment.
The S&P 500 Index fell more than 2% for a second straight day and is now in its longest slide since 2016. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 500 points, and the NASDAQ Composite closed down 1.3%.
Meanwhile, the AUD/USD pair slipped 0.06% at 0.7121 after data revealed China’s trade surplus rose to CNY 213.23 billion in September, compared with markets’ estimates of CNY 136.2 billion.
While not a directional driver, the data also showed China's unwrought copper imports rose to 521,000 tonnes in September. Meanwhile, iron ore imports increased 4.2% to a four-month high of 93.08 million tonnes in September. Rise in the Chinese imports of these commodities is good news for the Aussie dollar as they are Australia's top exports.
The yuan traded slightly higher following the release of the data, as the USD/CNY pair gained 0.2% to 6.9031. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) set the yuan reference rate at 6.9120 on Friday vs the previous day's fix of 6.9098.
Elsewhere, the USD/JPY pair last traded at 112.35, up 0.2%.
The USD/SGD pair dipped 0.3% to 1.3753 after Singapore's central bank tightened monetary policy for the second time this year on Friday.