Australia: The AUD has opened slightly stronger this morning as ongoing concerns about the recovery in the US economy weakened the USD.

The AUD had a mix session yesterday, falling through USD0.8800 early on in the session before recovering following the release of some Chinese data.

Although the data showed that China's economic growth is showing signs of a slowdown, the market still viewed some of the data results as positive and the AUD jumped nearly half a US cent following the announcements.

Weak manufacturing results in the US supported the AUD for most of the offshore session; however it wasn't enough for the AUD to make any substantial gains.

On the day, we expected the AUD to hold in a familiar trading range in the absence of any domestic data being released.

Majors: The EUR soared to a two month high against the USD Thursday as concerns eased over the euro-zone sovereign debt issues while worries continued to grow that the US economic recovery may be stalling.

Worries about the Euro-zone's fiscal crisis have been somewhat allayed by successful debt raisings by Greece, Spain and Portugal.

This has seen the EUR rally up towards $1.29, closer to the all important $1.30 level.

Supporting the EUR and other major currencies overnight was data showing a slowing US economy.

Two manufacturing surveys indicated expansion in factory activity had slowed significantly in the northeastern region of the US during July.

This raised concerns about the health of the US economy, weighing on the USD.

The data releases followed Wednesday's release of minutes from the Federal Reserve's June meeting where the Fed indicated that they were less optimistic than they had been and that further monetary stimulus could be needed if the economy showed more signs of slowing.

It seems investors have switched their attentions over to the US for now, so data and earnings results are going to be closely monitored for further signs of a recovery.

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