"We’ll get fresh data on the latter next week" - ING.

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The Pound to Australian Dollar exchange rate neared post-pandemic highs in the penultimate session of the week, helping Sterling to retain the Ashes in the currency market for the year thus far, though the risk is of economic growth in the Asia Pacific eventually acting as a stumbling block for GBP/AUD.

Pound Sterling came close to the top of the board among major currencies on Thursday as it lagged behind the Japanese Yen while trading neck and neck with the Swiss Franc, U.S. Dollar and Euro amid widespread losses for stock and bond markets around the world.

"A deterioration in risk sentiment, as evident in the sharp falls in Asian equities, was likely behind the weakness in AUD," says Carol Kong, an economist and currency strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

"We consider financial markets are lowering their expectations for a quick and large Chinese economic stimulus package as another day passes without any details from the government," she adds.

Risk aversion in the international markets left the Australian Dollar near the bottom of the G10 currency rankings for the session on Thursday while cementing it into the lower half of the table for the week, though local economic data remained relatively robust.

Above: Pound to Australian Dollar rate shown at daily intervals alongside AUD/USD and EUR/AUD. Click image for closer inspection.

This is after the Australian Bureau of Statistics data said its trade in goods and services surplus rose from a downwardly-revised A$10.45BN to A$11.79BN in May, aided by rising exports to China and some other countries.

GBP/AUD remained buoyant near intraday highs on Thursday after the Bureau of Labor Statistics said job openings fell from 10.32 million to 9.82 million in May, underperforming an economist consensus that had looked for a fall to 9.93 million.

"Labor demand clearly is trending down, but openings remain elevated. Whether this is real or a reflection of a pandemic-driven shift in how businesses use online recruiting is still an open question," says Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

"But it is striking how the NFIB hiring intentions measure has weakened much more than JOLTS, and has been a better guide to payrolls, at least until the past couple months," Shepherdson adds.

The decline in the official count of job vacancies covers all sectors of the economy for May but came after Automatic Data Processing Inc reported a sharp increase in both private sector openings and pay growth for the month of June.

It's possible that Thursday's simultaneous losses in stock and bond markets were a reflection of investors and traders contemplating how much higher interest rates might be raised by central banks in the U.S. and elsewhere as they seek to bring inflation back to their respective targets.

Above: Pound to Australian Dollar rate shown at weekly intervals alongside AUD/USD and EUR/AUD. Click image for closer inspection.

Thursday's gains helped to cement the Pound in place as the best-performing major currency of the year thus far but also came amid speculation suggesting the Bank of England (BoE) Bank Rate might be raised as far as 7% later this year or soon after.

This would be part of the BoE's effort to bring UK inflation back to the target level of 2% but there was not actually a forecast of 7% made by J.P. Morgan, which still tips the Bank Rate to peak at 5.75% by year-end.

Some other economists did also say, however, that the BoE's latest Decision Maker Panel offers a glimmer of hope for the UK economy.

"But June’s decision to lift rates by 50 basis points, having been hiking more gradually over recent months, showed that the wider BoE committee is losing patience and confidence in these forward-looking measures," says James Smith, a developed markets economist at ING.

"The reality is that the Bank is likely to pay less attention than usual to these surveys, and we think the next few policy decisions will be guided by CPI inflation, and to some extent average earnings, and not a lot else. We’ll get fresh data on the latter next week," he adds in a Thursday research briefing.