AUD / USD declines to 0.7400 zone, still on track to post daily gains

• AUD / USD stabilizes near 0.7400 in the American session.
• The US dollar index did not show any reaction to the release of US data.
• The focus shifts to the July Labor Market Report from the US Labor Statistics.

The pair AUD/USD it continued to rise during US trading hours on Thursday and hit a daily high of 0.7416 before entering a consolidation phase. At time of writing, the pair was up 0.4% on the day at 0.7408.

AUD capitalizes risk flows

In the absence of high-level macroeconomic data releases and significant fundamental developments, risk appetite helped the AUD outperform its US counterpart. Reflecting the improving market sentiment, the major Wall Street indices rose between 0.35% and 0.5% on Thursday.

Hours earlier, the US Department of Labor reported that there were 385,000 initial claims for unemployment benefits in the US during the week ending July 31. This reading largely coincided with market expectations and did not elicit a noticeable market reaction. Other US data revealed that the deficit for goods and services widened to $ 75.7 billion in June from $ 71 billion in May.

Ahead of the highly anticipated July jobs report on Friday, the US Dollar Index appears to close the day flat around 92.20.

In a preview of Nonfarm Payrolls data, “Homebase data suggests some acceleration in the private sector, while government payrolls probably benefited from favorable seasonal adjustments,” TD Securities analysts said. “We forecast another 0.3% MoM increase in average hourly earnings. The 12-month change is likely to rise again to 3.8% from 3.6% in June.”

Technical levels