AUD/USD remains fragile below 0.6600 as US NFP looms

AUD/USD justifies its risk-barometer status while revisiting the sub-0.6600 area early Friday, after a failed attempt to recover from the four-month low. In doing so, the Aussie pair traces the downbeat equities and fears emanating from China, as well as failing to cheer the retreat in the US Treasury bond yield and the US Dollar, amid the market’s cautious mood ahead of the all-important US employment data.

Wall Street benchmarks closed with more than 1.5% daily losses each but the US 10-year and two-year Treasury bond yields eased to 3.92% and 4.87% versus 5.08% and 4.01% daily open respectively. It should be noted that the US Dollar Index (DXY) managed to pare some of the daily losses by the end of Thursday but failed to ignore the biggest daily fall in a week.

While tracing the key catalysts mixed employment clues from the US gain major attention. That said, US Initial Jobless Claims marked the biggest jump since January by rising to 211K for the week ended on March 03 versus 195K expected and 190K prior. Additionally, the Challenger Job Cuts were down and the Continuing Jobless Claims were up.

Elsewhere, disappointment from China’s monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI) data for February also dims the prospects of recovery in the world’s second-largest economy and weighs on the risk profile. On the same line could be the fears of higher taxes in the world’s biggest economy, the US, as well as the political chaos relating to it as US President Joe Biden proposes raising corporation tax from 21% to 28% in his latest budget guide ahead of Friday’s release.

Above all, hawkish comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell join dovish rhetoric from Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Governor Philip Lowe to keep the AUD/USD bears hopeful as traders await the key US Nonfarm Payrolls, expected 205K versus 517K prior.

Given the mixed early clues and the strong prints in the last, fewer odds favor the positive surprise from the US jobs report and hence the AUD/USD pair may witness a corrective bounce. The hopes of recovery also take clues from the quote’s repeated failure to drop below 0.6550.

Also read: Nonfarm Payrolls Preview: Five scenarios for the Fed, USD and stocks reactions, with probabilities

Technical analysis

AUD/USD dribbles inside a 100-pip trading range between 0.6640 and 0.6540 comprising levels marked during late October and November 2022.