AUD/USD: Investors overestimate expectations for the U.S. Federal Reserve
The Australian currency is trading in a sideways trend, testing the level of 0.6700.
For the AUD/USD trading instrument, last week helped show an uptrend, allowing it to retreat from its June 2020 record level. Investors continue to refrain from new trades in the market ahead of a meeting of U.S. Federal Reserve officials. Market participants expect the agency to tighten monetary policy and increase the key indicator by 0.75%, but some economists admit that the correction could reach 1.00% at once. Analysts hope to read the regulator's updated assessments of inflation and economic growth rates. Based on the latest publication of macroeconomic forecasts, economists are confident that the U.S. economy has sufficient margin of safety to withstand the rising cost of credit. Relative to the Eurozone countries, the likelihood of a recession in the U.S. is extremely unlikely.
- Resistance levels: 0.6750, 0.6800, 0.6853 and 0.6900.
- Support levels: 0.6700, 0.6650, 0.6600, 0.6550.
NZD/USD: consolidation near a record low
A slight attempt to move to the upside in Friday's trading session was unsuccessful, with the NZD/USD currency pair approaching the 0.5950 level, a record low from May 2020.
A moderately positive impetus to the New Zealand dollar was given by positive macroeconomic data, according to which the PMI (business activity index) of the manufacturing sector strengthened to 54.9 points in August from 53.5 points earlier, with the market forecast of a drawdown to 52.5 points. With the beginning of the trading week the statistics on a similar index of the service sector from Business NZ came out and reflected the positive trend, strengthening to 58.6 points from 54.4 points.
- Resistance levels: 0.6000, 0.6049, 0.6100, 0.6155.
- Support levels: 0.5938, 0.5900, 0.5850, 0.5800.
USD/CHF: Negative factors continue to weigh on Swiss GDP
Tensions in the country's economy are making the currency pair USD/CHF unstable, which sent the instrument to 0.9663.
On Tuesday, national trade balance statistics will be released and the balance may show a decline to a minimum of 2.9 billion francs for the year amid rising import costs. Recall that in August, the strengthening of the index was 8.6% compared to the same period last year. SECO (State Secretariat for Economic Affairs) will release updated expectations that will reflect a clearer picture of inflation, which has all chances to strengthen to 3,3-3,5% by the end of September due to the rising cost of imports, marking another anti-record for the country.
- Resistance levels: 0.9700, 0.9843.
- Support levels: 0.9587, 0.9410.
Gold prices
The precious metal showed moderate decline since the beginning of the trading week, resuming the "bearish" trend after an insignificant upward correction a week earlier, consolidating at the level of 1665.00 with the prospect of further decline.
The euro zone energy crisis supports the demand of the "safe" asset, but tendencies to its reduction are developing a few weeks in a row, mainly on the background of the closing of the short-term deals at a blistering pace. The CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) report showed that speculative net contracts on the precious metal fell to 97,300 from 103,900 last week. Swap dealers will continue to be under the influence of the bears, with the number of the former reaching 171,871 from 89,922 buyers. General dynamics shows that bulls added 0.535k deals this week, whereas bears lost 4.059k deals.
- Resistance levels: 1675.00, 1688.58, 1700.00, 1720.00.
- Support levels: 1653.92, 1640.00, 1620.00, 1600.00.