AUD/USD: Sidelined near 0.72 after upbeat Aussie Retail Sales
- Upbeat Aussie data fails to ellicit a bullish reaction in AUD pairs.
- AUD/USD trades near 0.72 with upside possibly being capped by gold's decline.
- The pair fell to 0.7136 earlier this week on Fed's dismissal of yield curve control.
AUD/USD is trading in the sideways manner around 0.72 following the release of the positive Aussie Retail Sales data, having printed a high of 0.7216 early today.
Consumer spending rose 3.3% month-on-month in July, following June’s 2.7% increase, preliminary Retail Sales data released soon before press time showed.
A new coronavirus outbreak gathered pace in late June in the Australian state of Victoria, which eventually forced lockdown in Melbourne. Even so, retail sales growth picked up the pace in July. Consumer spending may have ticked higher due to panic buying amid new lockdown restrictions.
So far, the upbeat data has failed to elicit a bullish reaction from AUD/USD. One possible reason for that could be gold’s quick decline from $1,954 to $1,942 observed over the last one hour. That seems to have strengthened the bid tone around the American dollar. The yellow metal is looking heavy as per technical charts. As such, the AUD/USD pair is likely to remain under pressure during the day ahead.
AUD/USD fell to lows below 0.7140 earlier this week after the minutes from the Federal Reserve’s July meeting dashed hopes for no-limit stimulus measures like yield curve control. The pair, however, bounced back to 0.72 during Thursday’s US trading hours, as the dollar fell across the board in response to the dismal US weekly jobs data.
Technical levels