AUD/USD pulls back ahead of Australia’s private capital expenditure data

• AUD/USD bounces off Wednesday’s low amid likely improvement in second-tier data.
• The US-China trade tussle continues but sentiment recovers due to absence of fresh major negatives.

AUD/USD responds to the recent improvement in market sentiment while trading near 0.6740 during initial Thursday morning in Asia.

A surprise negative release of Construction Work Done during the second quarter (Q2) weighed on the Aussie pair amid the absence of fresh negatives from the US-China trade front and an economic calendar.

However, investors’ risk appetite seems to have improved off-late given the US President Donald Trump’s tweets. As a result, Wall Street took back some of the losses while the US 10-year Treasury yield showing no change with 1.468% by the press time.

Adding to the recovery could be the latest comments from the US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s President Marcy C. Daly. While the Treasury Secretary turned down the scope of the market intervention to tame the US Dollar (USD), the Fed policymaker supported easy monetary policy citing economic worries.

While Australia’s Private Capital Expenditure (Capex) numbers for second quarter (Q2) will be the key for immediate direction, trade/political headlines and the US second estimate of Q2 2019 Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Personal Consumer Expenditure Prices and Pending Home Sales will entertain investors then after.

ANZ remains optimistic about the Australian data while saying,” Private new capital expenditure (capex) data due out on Thursday 29 August are expected to show a modest 0.5% q/q rise in Q2. We could see a 0.6% q/q increase in building and structure capex if mining and public infrastructure tick up but only a 0.3% q/q rise in machinery and equipment capex. We expect another improvement in the outlook for both mining and nonmining capex in 2019-20, but weak business conditions and elevated global uncertainty will contained that somewhat.”

Even if market consensus favor +0.5% mark growth in the Australian Capex data versus -1.7% prior, any disappointment could be taken seriously considering the latest slew of negative statistics.

Technical Analysis

Recent lows at 0.6689 and 0.6677 can keep flashing on sellers radar unless breaking 21-day simple moving average (SMA) level of 0.6769.