AUD/USD jumps to 8-week highs above 0.72 on upbeat China data

AUD/USD rose to 0.7205 soon before press time, the highest level since Feb. 21.
China's GDP steadied at 6.4 percent in the first quarter, while March industrial production and retail sales bettered estimates by a big margin.
The upbeat data is boding well for the Aussie dollar, a proxy for China. The AUD/USD pair could extend gains further if the equities pick up a strong bid in response to China data.

Omkar Godbole FXStreet Contributor

The bid tone around the Aussie dollar seems to have strengthened in response to the better-than-expected China data dump.

As of writing, the AUD/USD pair is trading at a session high of 0.7200, having added more than 20 pips in the last few minutes.

The official data released at 02:00 GMT showed the world's second-largest economy expanded at an annualized rate of 6.4 percent in three months to March 2019, beating the expected growth rate of 6.3 percent, The economy had expanded 6.4 percent in the final quarter of 2018.

An above-forecast growth rate will likely strengthen the narrative that China's economy has bottomed out. As a result, riskier assets, including the AUD could remain better bid during the day ahead, more so, as both industrial production - a sign of external demand - and retail sales - a sign of domestic demand - released along with the GDP have bettered estimates.

Industrial production rose 8.5 percent year-on-year in March versus 5.3 percent in February, beating the expected rebound to 5.9 percent by a big margin. Meanwhile, retail sales rose 8.7 percent, surpassing the estimate of 8.4 percent.

Technical Levels

AUD/USD

Overview
Today last price	0.72
Today Daily Change	0.0000
Today Daily Change %	0.00
Today daily open	0.7175

Trends
Daily SMA20	0.7119
Daily SMA50	0.7108
Daily SMA100	0.7138
Daily SMA200	0.7192

Levels
Previous Daily High	0.718
Previous Daily Low	0.7139
Previous Weekly High	0.7193
Previous Weekly Low	0.7087
Previous Monthly High	0.7168
Previous Monthly Low	0.7002
Daily Fibonacci 38.2%	0.7164
Daily Fibonacci 61.8%	0.7155
Daily Pivot Point S1	0.7149
Daily Pivot Point S2	0.7124
Daily Pivot Point S3	0.7108
Daily Pivot Point R1	0.719
Daily Pivot Point R2	0.7206
Daily Pivot Point R3	0.7231

Author

Omkar Godbole

FXStreet Contributor

Omkar Godbole, editor and analyst, joined FXStreet after four years as a research analyst at several Indian brokerage companies.

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