AUD/USD loses the 0.74 level once again as bears retain control

• The Aussie is going to the bears for the new week with little data on the calendar ahead of Wednesday's CPI reading.
• Technical indicators are leaning towards the short side as bullish recovery attempts continue to flub just north of the 0.7400 key level.

The AUD/USD is trading near 0.7380 after falling back below the 0.7400 major level in Monday's declines, sliding further away from highs marked in late last week.

The Aussie is back on the defensive after last Friday's bullish recovery, and a thinned-out calendar for the early week is leaving traders to shuffle their feet ahead of Wednesday's inflation figures, and a rebound in broad-market US Dollar buying is seeing riskier assets like the AUD in a softened stance.

Wednesday's Consumer Price Index (CPI) figures, due early in the day at 01:30 GMT, could see Aussie traders return to the fold, though with the Reserve Bank of Australia's (RBA) q/q trimmed-mean CPI for 2018's Q2 expected to remain flat at 0.5%, a as-expected showing will see little action for the AUD/USD, while a miss or beat will see traders quickly adjusting their positions to accommodate the release.

AUD/USD Levels to watch

With last week marking in successive lower lows amidst rebounds into flat resistance levels, the pair is looking primed for further downside, and as FXStreet's own Valeria Bednarik noted, "the pair offers a neutral-to-bearish short-term technical stance, as, in the 4 hours chart and after meeting sellers around a bearish 200 SMA, it settled also below the 20 and 100 SMA. The Momentum indicator in the mentioned chart eases in positive territory, while the RSI heads south around 45, this last supporting additional slides without confirming them. A break below the 0.7370 level should favor a steeper decline toward the 0.7300 region. Whether the pair can extend its decline below this last or not, would most likely be linked to US indexes' direction these upcoming days."

Support levels: 0.7370 0.7330 0.7300    

Resistance levels: 0.7445 0.7490 0.7520