AUD/JPY bulls demoralized by the drop in Aussie Full time employment numbers

AUD/JPY backed-off from the session high of 88.148 after the Aussie jobs report showed a sharp drop in the full time employment numbers in January.

The devil is in the details

The employment report for January showed 13.5K job additions, which is well above the consensus estimate of 10K. The previous month’s number was revised higher to 16.3K from 13.5K. Meanwhile, the jobless rate printed at 5.7% compared to the expected rate of 5.8%.

However, the full time employment dropped 44.8K versus 11.3K in Dec. That seems to have taken the wind out of the Aussie bulls. The Aussie 10-year treasury yield retreated from the session high of 2.83% to 2.82%.

Consequently, the AUD/JPY cross trimmed gains to trade around 88.05 levels.

AUD/JPY Technical Levels

Breach of immediate resistance at 88.24 (Feb 2014 low) would open doors for 89.00, above which Feb 2015 low of 89.37 could be put to test. On the lower side, breach of support at 87.53 (Dec 2016 high) could yield a sell-off to 87.09 (Jan high). A violation there would signal a trend reversal and open doors to 86.41 (Aug 2013 low).