AUD/USD plummets to fresh multi-week lows, just below 0.6800 handle

• Downbeat Aussie jobs report prompts some aggressive selling on Thursday.
• Softer Chinese data, US-China trade uncertainty added to the bearish pressure.
• The prevalent risk-off mood further benefitted the USD’s safe-haven status.

The AUD/USD pair added to its heavy intraday losses and dropped to near one-month lows in the last hour, with bears now looking to extend the slide further below the 0.6800 handle.
 
Following the previous session’s rather subdued trading action, the pair witnessed some aggressive selling during the Asian session on Thursday following the release of downbeat Aussie jobs report and extended its recent sharp pullback from the 0.6930 region.

Weighed down by a combination of factors

The latest Australian employment details showed that the number of employed people during the previous month unexpectedly declined by 19K as against consensus estimates pointing to a reading of +15K and the unemployment rate ticked higher to 5.3%.
 
Adding to this, softer Chinese macro data – Industrial Production, Retail Sales and Fixed Asset Investment – exerted some additional bearish pressure on the China-proxy Australian Dollar, all against the backdrop of doubts over preliminary US-China trade deal.
 
Meanwhile, as investors looked past the Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s testimony on Wednesday, the prevalent risk-off mood benefitted the US Dollar’s perceived safe-haven status against its Australian counterpart and further collaborated to the pair’s slide to the lowest level since October 17.
 
It will now be interesting to see if the pair is able to find any support at lower levels or a sustained weakness below the 0.6800 mark triggers some follow-through technical selling as market participants now look forward to speeches by influential FOMC members for a fresh impetus.

Technical levels to watch