SYDNEY: The Australian and New Zealand dollars found some support on Monday as Asian markets steadied on hopes for progress on Sino-U.S. tariffs at an anxiously awaited G20 meeting later in the week.
The Australian dollar, often used as a liquid proxy for global trade prospects, edged up to $0.7242 and away from last week's low at $0.7202.
The kiwi hovered at $0.6785, having taken an early knock from surprisingly soft domestic data.
New Zealand retail sales showed no growth at all in real terms in the third quarter, when analysts had looked for a robust rise of around 1 percent.
A sharp fall in food and vehicle sales suggested economic growth might also disappoint in the quarter, though the impact might be balanced somewhat by a steep rise in inventories.
Still, both currencies remained hostage to a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Argentina this week to see if the world's biggest economies can de-escalate tensions over trade.
Trump has sounded slightly more conciliatory recently while heavy losses on Wall Street provide a home-grown reason to bolster market risk appetites.
"It has us believing that some form of handshake agreement could be reached whereby Trump agrees -- for now -- not to proceed with further tariff action," said NAB's head of FX strategy Ray Attrill.
"This is not a high conviction call, more like 60:40," he added. "And even if we're right, we suspect it will do no more than grant a temporary stay of execution to further trade action."
Yet, any deal could elicit enough relief to lift the Aussie to $0.7400 in the short term, said Attrill.
The lack of progress would likely be very bearish for the currency, particularly as worries over the Chinese economy have taken a heavy toll on iron ore and coal prices in recent days.
Futures for iron ore, Australia's single biggest export earner, tumbled nearly 6 percent on Monday as steel prices dropped to the lowest in almost five months.
In debt markets, Australian government bond futures were a fraction firmer, with the three-year bond contract up 1 tick at 97.885. The 10-year contract rose 1.5 ticks to 97.3600.
Yields on New Zealand government bonds fell 1.5 ticks across the curve.
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