AUD/USD kicks off key week with another bullish foot forward

• AUD/USD rose on Monday, climbing another 0.2% and chalking in a fifth straight bullish session.
• The Aussie is getting bolstered by a broad-market weakening in the US Dollar.
• Markets bet big that Friday's US NFP report will support a Fed rate cut.

AUD/USD rose on Monday, testing around one-fifth of one percent higher to kick off the new trading week. The Australian Dollar (AUD) is riding a broad-market weakening in the US Dollar (USD) as investors pivot into bets that the Federal Reserve (Fed) will be pushed into delivering an interest rate cut by this week's upcoming US Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP) jobs report.

A heavy data week will take an extra day to spin up into full-fledged wait-and-see mode: US markets are dark on Monday for the Labor Day holiday, crimping intraday flows. Barring any unexpected political headlines, markets are tilting into more of the same and extending last week's momentum.

Australian GDP and US PMI figures to get swamped out by US NFP jobs numbers

Australian Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth figures for the second quarter are due on Wednesday, and although Australian economic growth is expected to accelerate to 0.5% QoQ, the overall net effect is likely to remain muted. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has struck a notably cautious note as of late, and RBA rate cut expectations declined slightly after advance Australian inflation data pointed to an uptick in price pressures.

US data will dominate market sentiment this week. Things will kick off with US ISM Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) survey results on Tuesday, expected to rise to 49.0 from 48.0, with the ISM Services PMI component slated for a Thursday release and forecast to rise to 51.0 from 50.1. A grab bag of Fed officials will deliver speeches on Wednesday, but the latest JOLTS job openings figures, due on the same day, will likely overshadow Fed policymakers towing the data-dependent line.

This Friday's US NFP net jobs report could be a hard-hitting affair for market participants; the Fed's ongoing two-way focus on both inflation and employment figures has the US central bank poised for further rate cuts after net job gains through the midpoint of the year took a hard tumble, getting revised down sharply. With further downside revisions on the cards, investors will be hoping for continued NFP weakness to help push the Fed toward an interest rate cut on September 17.

AUD/USD price forecast

A fifth straight bullish session has put AUD/USD on a collision course with the top end of the pair's long-running consolidation zone. The 0.6550 region has become familiar ground for the Aussie, and the 200-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA) near 0.6460 is poised to hold steady as a firm technical floor.

The Aussie is up a little over 2.1% against the Greenback bottom-to-top from August's swing low point near 0.6415. However, AUD/USD bulls are at risk of running out of gas after pushing prices higher for all but one of the last seven straight daily sessions

AUD/USD daily chart