AUD/USD flirting with lows, around 0.75 handle ahead of Fedspeaks

   •  USD jumps to fresh YTD tops and prompts some aggressive selling.
   •  Positive US bond yields/weaker commodities add to the pressure.
   •  Traders eye Fedspeaks ahead of Tuesday Aussie/Chinese macro data.

The AUD/USD pair continued losing ground through the early NA session and momentarily dipped below the key 0.7500 psychological mark in the last hour.

A strong follow-through greenback buying interest, with the key US Dollar Index rising to its highest level since late December, was seen as one of the key factors weighing heavily on the major.

This coupled with a mildly positive tone around the US Treasury bond yields, supported by rising speculations over a faster Fed monetary policy tightening cycle exerted some additional downward pressure on higher-yielding currencies - like the Aussie.

Meanwhile, a weaker tone around commodity space, especially copper, also did little to extend any support to the commodity-linked Australian Dollar and stall the pair's intraday slide of around 50-pips.

Traders now look forward to speeches by influential FOMC member for some short-term impetus ahead of Tuesday's more relevant Aussie monthly retail sales and Chinese trade balance data.

Technical levels to watch

Weakness below the 0.7500 handle might continue to find some support near the 0.7475-70 region, below which the pair is likely to accelerate the fall further towards 0.7435 intermediate support en-route the 0.7400 round figure mark.

On the upside, the 0.7525-35 region now seems to act as an immediate hurdle, which if cleared might trigger a short-covering bounce and assist the pair back towards reclaiming the 0.7600 handle with some intermediate resistance near 0.7575-80 zone.