Last Friday, I asked the question in my blog whether to buy or sell the Australian dollar. There, I detailed the several bearish technical and fundamental signals that I saw. At that time, the AUDUSD pair had rallied all the way up to 0.8500 after marking a new 2010 low at 0.80669 last May 25. During the course of its rebound, however, I noticed that it was forming a rising wedge which was again a bearish pattern. Note also that the pair was having a hard time moving past 0.8500. At one point, it was able to reach 0.85514 but then it weakened soon afterward. Incidentally, this recent high was perfectly in line with the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level of the latest down wave, making the 0.8500 region a tougher hurdle to scale. The unfortunate (well, at least for the Aussie bulls’ perspective) happened last Friday when the AUDUSD finally broke down from the rising wedge formation.
Now, with the stochastics far from being oversold, the Aussie still has a lot of space to cover below. A break of this year’s low at 0.80669 could send it somewhere above 0.7700 which is the minimum downside target given its breakdown from a massive double top formation last May 18.
The breakdown in the Australian dollar was due to the sovereign default scare by Hungary and the weak non-farm employment change in the US in May. Payrolls in the US only increased by 431,000 last month against the 521,000 projection. This result further intensified the fear that was brought about by Hungary. In a statement made by Hungarian official, they said the country’s fiscal difficulty was grave and that a default was very much a possibility. This, of course, led the investors to sell-off the higher yielding currencies like the AUD in exchange for the safer USD and JPY.
In my other post today, I noted that the non-dollar currencies or the higher yielding currencies could open up weak since the Asian market has yet to price in last Friday’s events. Given the gravity of the situation in Hungary and the weight of the NFP report, which by the way is the mother of all economic reports, the AUDUSD pair could even gap down to begin this week’s trading. In the mean time, on deck today is the May ANZ job advertisements. The account fell by 1.2% last month. Though, a little gain is seen this time around. However, an unexpected decline here could further dampen the investors’ confidence on the AUD. A rise, on the one hand, could slow down the currencies present slide.
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