Bloomberg
Australia saw off recession fears this week, though the economy remains anemic. The local dollar surged toward its best weekly gain since March, only to run into turbulence when data dump showed a tumble in exports.
A flattening yield curve and a sliding stock market also highlighted concerns that the nation’s 26-year streak of recessionless growth is getting weary. And the slide in Bendigo & Adelaide Bank Ltd. — shares in the mid-tier lender reached an eight-month low — helped underscore the drop in housing prices. Even the week’s best-performing Aussie stock was nothing to cause much joy; Vocus Ltd. rebounded after an epic slide as KKR & Co. offered to buy it for A$2.18 billion.
The following charts highlight the standouts in a topsy turvy week Down Under. The Aussie closed out May as the worst of the G-10 major developed currencies this quarter as anxiety built in the leadup to GDP figures due this Wednesday. It was up more than 1 percent by the end of the Sydney trading day, as the RBA scotched bets for a rate cut this year and then annual growth beat expectations.
Mind you, that annual growth rate — 1.7 percent — only just beat the 1.6 percent forecast consensus; and it also happens to be the weakest pace of expansion since 2009. And the national accounts also highlighted weakness in exports and consumer demand.