USD/CHF remains confined in a range, around parity mark ahead of Powell’s testimony

   “¢   Subdued USD price action has failed to assist the pair to register any meaningful recovery.
   “¢   US-China trade optimism undermines safe-haven demand and helped limit deeper losses.
   “¢   Focus remains on the Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s semiannual testimony before the Congress.

The USD/CHF pair extended its sideways consolidative price action and remained confined within a one-week-old trading range, around the parity mark.

A combination of diverging factors failed to assist the pair to register any meaningful recovery from over two-week lows, set last week, and led to a subdued/range-bound price action for the fifth consecutive session.  

Expectations that the Fed might refrain from raising interest rates further in 2019 kept exerting some downward pressure on the US Dollar and turned out to be one of the key factors keeping a lid on any attempted bounce.

The downside, however, remained cushioned in wake of the latest optimism over US-China trade negotiations, which dented the Swiss Franc’s relative safe-haven status and helped limit deeper losses, at least for now.

Moving ahead, today’s US economic docket, highlighting the release of Conference Board’s consumer confidence index will be looked upon for some short-term trading opportunity during the early North-American session.

The key focus, however, will be on the Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s semiannual testimony before Congress, which would be closely scrutinized for the central bank’s policy outlook and eventually provide a fresh directional impetus.

Technical levels to watch

Immediate resistance is pegged near the 1.0025 region, above which the recovery could further get extended towards 1.0050 level before the pair eventually makes a fresh attempt towards conquering the 1.0100 key hurdle. On the flip side, the 0.9985-80 region now seems to have emerged as immediate support, which if broken is likely to accelerate the slide towards 0.9940 horizontal level en-route the 0.9910-0.9900 region.