AUD/USD trims gains despite upbeat China data

A better-than-expected China industrial production and retail sales number has failed to boost the appetite for the Aussie dollar.

AUD/USD retreated from the session high of 0.7872 to 0.7850 after China reported third quarter growth rate of 6.8% y/y as expected. The growth rate in the previous quarter was 6.9%.

Meanwhile, industrial production came-in at 6.6% y/y, beating the forecast of 6.2% and printing well above the previous figure of 6.0%. Retail sales printed at 10.3%, beating the estimate of 10.2%.

Still, the Aussie is trimming gains. A slight drop in the growth rate could be hurting the Aussie, although markets usually tend to focus on the relatively more forward looking indicators like the retail sales.

Investors may have taken the note of the sharp slowdown in the Aussie full-time jobs report, thus leading to a drop in the AUD from 0.7872 to 0.7850.

AUD/USD Technical Levels

Jim Langlands from FXCharts says, "the dailies still look positive". He adds, " the Aud has had a similar session to yesterday, falling to 0.7818 before recovering; to finish just below the base of the daily cloud, with today’s direction to be provided by the local Unemployment data and the host of China data. The 4 hour charts still suggest that selling into strength seems to be the plan, looking for an eventual move toward 0.7800. The dailies still look positive though, so I suspect that we could well be confined to a choppy range today, again confined to 0.7800/0.7900."