USD/CAD Technical Forecast: At make or a break below 1.3600 ahead of Fed Powell’s speech

• USD/CAD hovers near 1.3600, the potential breakdown region of the Broadening Triangle chart pattern.
• Investors keenly await Fed Powell’s speech at the JH Symposium.
• The Canadian Dollar will dance to the tunes of the monthly Retail Sales data for June.

The USD/CAD pair falls back below 1.3600 after a short-lived pullback move to near 1.3616 in Friday’s European session. The Loonie asset weakens as the US Dollar (USD) struggles to hold Thursday’s recovery move, driven by better-than-estimated preliminary United States (US) S&P Global PMI for August.

The US Dollar Index (DXY), which tracks the Greenback’s value against six major currencies, falls to near 101.30. The Greenback is expected to remain on the sidelines, with investors focusing on the Federal Reserve (Fed) Chair Jerome Powell’s speech at the Jackson Hole (JH) Symposium.

In the JH event at 14:00 GMT, Jerome Powell is expected to provide fresh guidance on interest rates and the economic outlook. The Fed is widely anticipated to start reducing its key borrowing rates from the September meeting but traders are split over the likely size of interest rate cuts.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Dollar (CAD) will be influenced by the domestic monthly Retail Sales data for June, which will be published at 12:30 GMT. The Retail Sales data, a key measure of consumer spending that prompts inflationary pressures, is estimated to have declined consequently. The consumer spending measure is expected to have contracted by 0.3% after dropping 0.8% in May.

Lower sales at retail stores point to a decline in the purchasing power of households, which would prompt expectations of more Bank of Canada’s (BoC) interest rate cuts this year.

USD/CAD is on the verge of delivering a breakdown of the Broadening Triangle chart formation on a daily timeframe. The asset hovers near the horizontal support of the above-mentioned chart pattern below 1.3600.

The overall trend is bearish as it trades below the 200-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA), which trades around 1.3630.

The 14-day Relative Strength Index (RSI) oscillates in the bearish range of 20.00-40.00, suggesting a firm downside momentum.

More downside would appear if the asset breaks below April 9 low of 1.3540. This would drag the asset towards the psychological support of 1.3500, followed by March 21 low of 1.3456.

In an alternate scenario, a recovery move above August 12 high of 1.3750 would drive the asset toward the round-level resistance of 1.3800 and April 17 high near 1.3840.

USD/CAD daily chart