AUD/USD holding steady near 0.7200 after Retail Sales, PPI results go mixed

• Aussie bidders keeping the pair afloat on a PPI beat, but lackluster Retail Sales will drag on the day's mood.
• It's another US NFP Friday, and markets will be tensing ahead of the Friday mega-event.

The AUD/USD is seeing continued lift in early Friday trading as Aussie bulls shrug off a missed Retail Sales reading, opting to focus on PPI numbers that came in better than expected.

Australia's seasonally-adjusted Retail Sales for September printed at 0.2%, missing the forecasted 0.3% and sagging further from the previous month's 0.3%, although Australia's quarterly Producer Price Index clocked in at 0.8%, handily beating the 0.2% forecast and vaulting over the previous quarter's 0.3%, but inflationary figures can only carry bulls so far as core economic activity in the Australian domestic economy continues to suffer lagging and lopsided growth.

The Aussie is trading into the 0.7200 handle immediately following the mixed data release, managing to barely clip into a new high for the week after spending several days wallowing in a familiar consolidation zone. The AUD/USD has managed to break out of a rough three-week sideways pattern, but Friday's incoming US NFP report at 12:30 GMT promises plenty of Dollar-based action to send the pair whipping into the weekend.

AUD/USD levels to watch

The Aussie has managed to make a clean break above the topside of a descending trendline on the Daily candles which is intersecting with the 50-day moving average near 0.7170, but the AUD remains capped by the pair's last swing high from September's tail-end near 0.7315, and failure by buyers to keep the pair pushing into a fresh bullish recovery will see the AUD/USD slipping back to retest the upper bound of October's consolidation near 0.7160.