AUDUSD remains tactically bearish, but what about structurally?

AUDUSD remains in nominally bearish territory after a test of the key 200-day moving average resistance, but other technicals suggest it remains in pivot zone as we await the key FOMC meeting on Wednesday.


Risk off on Eurogroup no-show
The Eurogroup meeting over the weekend was essentially a non-event, as covered by our Mr. Robinson a short while ago in his update. Ahead of the weekend, the market was trying to price in at least solid odds of more decisive action or an indication that action is on the way. As utterly failed to come to pass, we got a gap open lower in the risk trades, including the must usual of suspects among the major currencies, AUDUSD (even with a weak Euro, EURAUD is actually higher from Friday’s close, showing that the Aussie seems to be the highest beta currency here to risk appetite.)

Chart: AUDUSD
For AUDUSD, the follow-up sell-off affirms the recent break of the 200-day moving average, a sell-off that is also seeing the completion of a shoulder-like formation after the huge double top area, that taken together is a like a “Batman head” with two left shoulders and a curious, bat-eared head, and now followed with a single, rather large right shoulder. For the H&S formation, the neckline comes just below recent lows or even down to parity if we use the lows to draw the line rather than the low closes. More locally, the recent lows are more influential around 1.0180. Leave it to say that final confirmation of a new downtrend comes with a close below here and then below parity.



From an inter-market standpoint, the situation is rather curious – the USD has launched a powerful rally against virtually all emerging market currencies, with even Asian currencies flailing for support this time around to the most significant degree since last May or even further back in some cases. This would normally be associated with even more AUDUSD weakness than we have seen thus far.

Meanwhile, the US equity market has rallied within its recent range and appears to be hoping that the Fed will launch the next round of QE that will result in a redux of the market environment from QE2.  (So currencies and other risk spreads suggest AUD is too strong, while the AUD semi-resilience makes some sense given signs of hope in the US equity market) This is a rather stark divergence from the normal correlation and piques our interest as this Wednesday’s FOMC meeting approaches. Normally, a full breakdown in AUDUSD would also require that the equities are fully on the defensive as well. Another market of interest is, of course, “industrial” commodities. Among those is copper, which has become financialised and critical in Chinese financing/credit schemes in addition to its industrial uses. It is breaking an important support zone here at the beginning of the week in the 3.90 area.

All of the above suggests we are in key pivot zone for AUDUSD in the coming week or two that determines whether we get full confirmation here of a budding downtrend – with the FOMC meeting this Wednesday as the first potential event risk trigger.