EUR/AUD has been the most volatile pair recently making highly impulsive spikes without any definite trend momentum in the process. The eurozone is struggling with the economic slowdown. Thus, AUD is taking advantage of downbeat data from the eurozone. At the same time, AUD is also suffering the fallout of the global economic headwinds.
This week there was positive news from the ZEW economic sentiment survey on Germany, which is a key gauge of investor confidence. The indicator has been stalled on negative territory for the past 12 months and eventually climbed into positive territory in April 2019. This week, the business climate index jumped to 3.1 from -3.6 in March. Such improvement added confidence to institutional investors and analysts. The eurozone ZEW indicator also surged to 4.5 from -2.5 which is also a positive sign. The ECB maintained the key interest rate at a record low of 0.0% along with the deposit rate. The ECB stated at the last policy meeting that they don't have any plan to increase the rate at least until late 2019. The main focus for the ECB would be to ensure the continued sustained conjunction of inflation to levels that are below, but close to 2% in the medium term.
The inflation has been moving towards the governing council's inflation target. The euro area's real GDP rose by 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2018, following an increase of 0.1% in the Q3. The manufacturing sector is still feeble due to soft external demand. Annual HICP inflation edged down to 1.4% in March 2019 from 1.5% in February because of a decline in food, services, and non-energy industrial goods price inflation. Broad money growth improved by 4.3% in February 2019 from 3.8% in January. The annual growth rate of loans to non-financial corporations recovered to 3.7% in February 2019 from 3.4% in January. Overall, the European economy in on the recovery mode. Besides, BREXIT tensions have also calmed down for some month.
On the other hand, today Australia's Employment Change report was published with an increase to 25.7k from the previous figure of 10.7k which was expected to be at 15.2k. On the minus side, an unemployment rate grew to 5.0% in March as expected from 4.9% in February. The Reserve Bank of Australia left the cash rate unchanged at 1.5% with a dovish policy update that put pressure on AUD. However, strong data from China cushioned AUD from bearish momentum. The Australian labor market is also healthy that is certainly bullish for AUD.
RBA policymakers admitted softer growth in the domestic economy and cancelled their forecast of 3% GDP growth for this year. The global slowdown in the economy is affecting the international trade of Australia. The long-term bond yields have fallen while short-term bank funding costs have weakened further.
Meanwhile, AUD has been quite firm in light of the upbeat employment change. So, AUD is expected to assert strength over EURO. On the flip side, an uptick in the unemployment rate may indicate further AUD weakness against EUR in the short term. Despite the eurozone's economic slowdown, EUR could gain ground while AUD has to struggle for keeping momentum.
Now let us look at the technical view. The pair has been trading quietly amid the bearish pressure which is being held b level of 20 EMA as resistance along the way. The price recently formed Bullish Divergence as well which also indicates a probability of the price pushing higher along the way before moving lower with a target towards 1.5500 and later towards 1.5300 support area in the coming days. As the price remains below 1.60 area with a daily close, the pair is likely to trade with a bearish bias.
