AUD/USD climbs back closer to multi-week tops, comfortable above mid-0.6800s

Escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East exerted some pressure earlier this Monday.
US-China trade optimism continues to underpin the Aussie and helped regain some traction.
The upside is likely to remain limited ahead of RBA minutes on Tuesday and FOMC meeting.

Haresh Menghani FXStreet

The AUD/USD pair quickly reversed the weekly bearish gap opening, albeit struggled to extend the momentum and remained well within a broader trading range held over the past one-week or so.

After last week's repeated failures ahead of the 0.6900 handle, the pair opened with a mild bearish gap at the start of a new trading week in reaction to escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. The weekend attacks on Saudi Arabian refining facilities triggered a fresh wave of the global risk-aversion trade and weighed on perceived riskier currencies - like the Australian Dollar.

Trade optimism attract some dip-buying

However, the recent optimism over the resumption of US-China trade talks and encouraging trade-related developments continued attracting some dip-buying interest around the China-proxy Aussie, which coupled with a subdued US Dollar price action - despite a follow-through uptick in the US Treasury bond yields - remained supportive of the pair's intraday uptick of around 20-pips.

The up-move seemed rather unaffected by the disappointing Chinese macro releases, showing that Chinese retail sales rose 7.5% year-on-year rate in August as compared to 7.9% expected and industrial production slowed further to 4.4% in August from 4.8% in July.

Meanwhile, bulls seemed lacking any strong conviction, rather refrained from placing any aggressive bets and preferred to wait on the sidelines heading into the upcoming key event risk - the highly anticipated FOMC monetary policy meeting later this week on September 17-18.

The Fed is widely expected to cut interest again on Wednesday, though opinions on aggressive easing remain divided and should lead to some unusual volatility during the second half of this week/assist investors to determine the pair's next leg of a directional move.

In the meantime, the broader market risk sentiment and the USD price dynamics might be looked upon for some short-term trading opportunities amid absent relevant market-moving US economic releases and ahead of the RBA policy meeting minutes, due to be released during the Asian session on Tuesday.

Technical levels to watch

AUD/USD

Overview
Today last price	0.6877
Today Daily Change	-0.0001
Today Daily Change %	-0.01
Today daily open	0.6878

Trends
Daily SMA20	0.6791
Daily SMA50	0.6853
Daily SMA100	0.6904
Daily SMA200	0.7013

Levels
Previous Daily High	0.6891
Previous Daily Low	0.6856
Previous Weekly High	0.6895
Previous Weekly Low	0.6837
Previous Monthly High	0.6869
Previous Monthly Low	0.6676
Daily Fibonacci 38.2%	0.6878
Daily Fibonacci 61.8%	0.6869
Daily Pivot Point S1	0.6859
Daily Pivot Point S2	0.684
Daily Pivot Point S3	0.6824
Daily Pivot Point R1	0.6894
Daily Pivot Point R2	0.691
Daily Pivot Point R3	0.6929

Author

Haresh Menghani

FXStreet

Haresh Menghani is a detail-oriented professional with 10+ years of extensive experience in analysing the global financial markets.

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