- The lack of catalysts ahead of US NFP favors the continuation of the current trend.
- A near-term downward sloping trend-line signal further downside.
Having digested FOMC moves and mixed signals from the US-China trade negotiations, not to forget upbeat from the US, NZD/USD trades little changed around 0.6620 at the start of the Asian session on Friday.
While lack of domestic catalysts gave little room to the Kiwi movement, the overall tone remained downbeat for the pair as the US Dollar (USD) held across the board gains on upbeat data and positive expectations for today’s headline employment numbers.
Challenges were also revealed from trade discussions between the US and China are market speculations grew that the talks are deadlocked.
As there doesn’t prevail anything on the economic calendar, Kiwi traders are taking every news with the pinch of salt ahead of next week’s monetary policy meeting by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ).
Though, housing data from it’s largest customer Australia and the US April month jobs report will be the key to watch in addition to reports from the trade front.
AU numbers are less likely to provide any help to the current sluggish trading while expected improvement in the US data could add further weakness into the quote.
The US average hourly earnings (YoY) could grow to 3.3% from 3.2% while the headline nonfarm payrolls (NFP) may soften to 185K from 196K with unemployment likely holding 3.8% mark.
Technical Analysis
Considering the five-week-old descending trend-line, prices are likely to continue declining unless breaking out 0.6665 resistance, which in turn could give rise to 0.6700 and 200-day simple moving average (SMA) level of 0.6730.
On the downside, an area comprising January – April lows near 0.6590/80 can restrict the pair’s near-term declines ahead of highlighting 0.6550 and 0.6510 supports.
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