The Aussie was slow to react as the national jobless rate jumped last month.

The unemployment rate in Australia ticked up to 5.3% in January, up from 5.1% on the prior and above the 5.2% expected.

At the same time, the number of jobs created beat expectation at 13.5K vs 10K exp, however, it was sharply lower. We must remember that there is not always a lot of economic activity over that period as it is the holiday break for most Australian’s and not usually a time we would expect to see a surge in job ads.

So while the AUD/USD did take the number with a grain of salt early, the sellers have clearly started to jump on board. Initially, the Aussie fell before recovering higher and was green for quite a while.

Then the floodgates opened and the Aussie broke through the key support level around 0.6680 and is now pushing down to 0.6650.

We have seen this level holding strongly for a long time now – particularly 0.6700 – but the bearish outlook that we heard from the RBA topped with a strong USD and today’s data appears to be just a little bit too much.

Technically, this is also just a big level and the fact that price has been holding under 0.6700 is a bearish sign. We were short the AUD/USD prior and our signal hit our target.

There was a very good opportunity to short as I mentioned in the Live Calendar as all the risk here was slanted to the downside and the hopes of a bounce appeared low at best on the back of the number.

Bulls will say the time of year is the big unknown and they are probably right. But what we are likely to hear from the next RBA meeting will be very interesting indeed.

Clearly we need a short bias for the time being.