Trading plan for 16/08/2018:

The European session looks to be rather quiet. Traders will get acquainted with the trade balance in the euro area and the data on the British retail sales. In the afternoon we will have a series of data from the USA and Canada. Wall Street is concerned about the longest correction of the DJIA index for over 50 years. At night, data from Japan and Australia were published.

Japan published data on the trade balance overnight. They turned out to be worse than expected. Previously, the trade surplus was 721 billion JPY. Now a deficit of JPY 50 billion was expected, and it amounted to as much as 231 billion JPY. The blame for this situation is a strong drop in the growth rate of exports, which in July in annual terms increased by only 3.9% (expected 6.3%, previously 6.7%).

On Thursday, the 16th of August, the event calendar is busy with important data releases. Beside the Unemployment Rate data from Australia, the market participants should pay attention to Retail Sales data from the UK, Canadian ADP Non-Farm Employment Change and Manufacturing Shipments data, Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index, Building Permits and Housing Start data from the US. No speeches were scheduled for today.

AUD/USD analysis for 16/08/2018:

The Australian labor market data were released overnight. Employment was expected to increase by 15k people, however, there was a decrease of 3.9k people. It happened due to the reduction of seasonal employment by 23.2k people, but the number of people working on the full stage increased by 19.3k.

However, the unemployment rate has decreased - from 5.4% to 5.3%, which is a surprise, because, despite high expectations for employment growth, the markets did not expect a change in this value. The decrease in the participation rate is partially responsible, from 65.7% to 65.5%. AUDUSD reacted to the increases, which currently amount to around 40 pips.

Let's now take a look at the AUD/USD technical picture at the H4 time frame. The market bounced from the level of 0.7202, broke through the resistance at the level of 0.7246 and was capped at the level of 0.7279. Currently, the price is trading just below this market as the pull-back from the oversold conditions continues. In a case of a further up move, the next target for bulls is seen at the level of 0.7298 (38% Fibo), 0.7313 - 0.7323 zone and eventually at the level of 50% Fibo at 0.7327. The nearest support is seen at the level of 0.7246.