Today, the Australian dollar recovered throughout the market. During the Asian session, the AUD / USD pair approached the boundaries of the 69th figure, making up for its lost positions. Data on Australian labor market was better than expected, offsetting the impact of the "pigeon" protocol of the RBA, which was published on Tuesday. AUD / USD buyers again had hopes of maintaining a wait-and-see position in the part of the Australian regulator. Today's release was not able to reverse the situation in principle, and by large, the pair remains flat within which it has been trading for the last three months. On the other hand, the published figures allowed the bulls to at least temporarily seize the initiative, extinguishing downward momentum.
The results of the December meeting could not clearly answer the question whether the regulator is ready to ease further the conditions of monetary policy or if it intends to keep a pause in this issue after three rounds of rate cuts. The scale, which consists of slowing GDP growth, weak inflation, household debt and a mixed labor market, as well as its other side, consisting of the situation in the housing market in Australia and the tax policy of the government of the country, is all balanced. For example, the cost of housing in Sydney rose in November by 2.7%, which is the strongest growth rate observed in the last 30 years. Melbourne showed similar dynamics, where prices rose by 2.2%, the highest since 2015.
Such trends have forced members of the RBA to resort to fairly streamlined formulations regarding the prospects of monetary policy. According to the minutes of the last meeting, the Central Bank is ready for further action, but has so far taken a pause to assess the effectiveness of the measures taken. The regulator focused its attention on the sphere of the labor market, that is why the data published today caused such volatility for the pair. If the indicators come out in the "red zone", the probability of a rate cut at the beginning of next year increases significantly. However, taking into account the actual data, we can assume that the situation has again hung in the air, allowing the AUD / USD pair to be within the multi-month flat (maintaining the range of 0.6700-0.6880).
Despite the "green coloring", today's release is ambiguous. The unemployment rate is slightly above the forecasted level (5.2%). Let me remind you that at the beginning of the year, unemployment was at the level of five percent, which fell to 4.9% in February, but then stabilized in the area of 5.2-5.3%. Most experts assumed that the indicator would remain at 5.3%, but instead, actually moved to the previous position of 5.2% (it went to this level from April to July, as well as in September). Therefore, if we consider the situation throughout the year, we can not talk about reducing unemployment.
The employment growth rate raises even more questions. Today, it also came out in the "green zone". After a significant decline in October (-24 thousand) and rather weak forecasts for November (+14.5 thousand), the indicator, at first glance, showed a good result of + 39.9 thousand. However, considering the structure of this indicator, we can conclude that the situation does not really look quite positive.
The fact is that the positive dynamics of employment growth was only due to the growth of part-time employment, which increased by 35.7 thousand. Full employment, on the contrary, showed extremely weak dynamics, rising by only four thousand. This trend may have a negative impact on the dynamics of wage growth, as full-time positions tend to offer higher level of wages and a higher level of social security.
All in all, today's release was able to stop the downward movement of AUD/USD and even provoked a corrective pullback. However, regrettably, the published figures will not help the pair's bulls to overcome the key resistance levels necessary for the development of an upward trend. The first target is located at 0.6900, the upper line of the Bollinger Bands indicator on the weekly chart. A hundred points higher, at the level of 0.7000 (the lower limit of the Kumo cloud on W1), there is a key resistance level, which is" not in the teeth "of the buyers of "Aussie" for almost six months (to be more precise, since July).
Given the ambiguous structure of the data published today, we can assume that the upward dynamics of the AUD / USD pair will be short-term, and the subsequent price growth is only possible due to the weakness of the US currency and / or positive news from the front of the US-Chinese trade negotiations. In general, the pair continues to trade within the flat, in a wide range of 0.6700-0.6880.