Australian, New Zealand dollars hold gains

The Australian and New Zealand dollars held onto hefty gains on Tuesday, after some surprisingly soft US economic news upended their US counterpart and Australia's central bank put rates on hold for the next couple of months.

The Aussie was enjoying the view at $0.6842, having climbed 0.9% overnight for its largest one-day gain since mid-October. Chart resistance lies around $0.6860, while major support is down at $0.6755.

The kiwi dollar fared even better touching a four-month top at $0.6511 after jumping 1.2% overnight. A break of resistance around $0.6466 looked to have triggered a wave of short covering with speculators having gotten heavily long of US dollars in recent weeks.

The rally began on Monday when an influential survey of US manufacturing showed an unexpected slowdown in activity, one that challenged the US dollar's standing as an economic outperformer.

The Aussie got a further fillip when the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) closed out the year with rates on hold at 0.75%, so removing the risk of an easing until the next policy meeting in early February.

The central bank also stuck with its optimistic outlook for the economy, arguing that low rates was boosting asset prices and incomes and would eventually feed through to more spending.

That led investors to pare back the chance of a cut in February to around 48%, from 60%, though a move by May was still considered a done deal.

"The overall tone of the RBA statement was arguably a bit more upbeat, so we would not be surprised to see some further strength above $0.6850," said Robert Rennie, head of FX strategy at Westpac.

"However, we are forecasting two rate cuts next year with quantitative easing expected to begin in the second half of 2020," he added. "We would also argue that much above $0.6850, the A$ is starting to look expensive on the basis of our fair value models."

For now, bonds surrendered some of their recent gains with

three-year futures easing 6 ticks to 99.250 and away from last week's top at 99.395.

The 10-year contract lost 6.5 ticks to 98.8400, implying a yield of 1.16%.