Australia Employment Data Misses – Reaction and Charts

Dec Jobless rate was disappointing, coming in at -5.5K versus +4.0K expected. Jobless rate increases to 5.4% from 5.2. Looking deeper, the headline figure of -5.5K can be broken down to: Full Time Employment Change -13.8K, and part time +8.3K.

Prices went lower but is still relatively supported, with the lowest price hitting just below 1.0535, some distance away (at least on the 15 min chart) from the previous low found at 5pm SGT yesterday (4am EST). Currently we are trading just above 1.0550, with short-term resistance around 1.0555 to 1.0560. Failure to push higher above 1.0560 will continue to weigh heavily on bulls.

Did this miss change anything? Not exactly. The sell-off that we’re looking at started during the early Asian trade after US close, which saw price falling from the 1.0575 ceiling before the data miss added winds to the bearish sails. What is more comforting for the bulls is the fact that price wasn’t able to proceed to ride on the waves to hit a new bearish breakout, but instead retreated back to higher grounds.

Daily Chart still shows an uptrend from the rally since Oct ’12 lows. Prices saw a dip in Mid Dec ’12 which recovered towards the end of the year to bring us where we are currently. 1.06 remains a bugbear for the bulls as current rally has failed to hold onto once more, with the memory of previous failure back in Sep ’12 beginning the sell-off to the Oct ’12 lows mentioned previously. Will this fresh failure bring out the bears in the market? Stochastic suggest that a sell-off could be imminent. However, significant support could still be found around 1.053. Break below may trigger similar selling behaviors found barely 1 month ago.

22nd Jan 07:30pm CPI q/q