Gold is catching a second wind in the past month or so, after having seen the January seasonal rally wane in February trading. The banking turmoil saw gold benefit from being a traditional safe haven asset and as the Fed outlook was dented, gold also benefited from markets no longer seeing an aggressive tightening path this year.
That culminated in a push back above the $2,000 mark last week and prices are still holding on to that for the most part. There is a slight state of flux so far this week but if you look at the near-term chart, buyers are definitely showing up where it matters most.
The 200-hour moving average (blue line) is where buyers leaned on before running into familiar resistance from the 100-hour moving average (red line) yesterday. The latter was broken through earlier today though, as gold buyers establish a more bullish near-term momentum just above the $2,000 mark for now.
As such, those will be key lines in the sand in determining the near-term momentum bias ahead and in the aftermath of the US CPI data later.
In the bigger picture though (going back to the weekly chart), gold is trying to stay poised in scaling to the 2020 and 2022 highs around $2,070-75. That will be the biggest and most important resistance region for gold in trying to establish a stronger upside break.
It seems almost likely that markets are becoming increasingly convinced that such a break is more of a question of when than if, considering that major central banks are slowly heading to the sidelines.
If the economic downturn can be managed gracefully and inflation becomes less of a problem in the year to come, the idea of rate cuts might start coming into the picture and that will be yet another major boost for gold down the road.
But for now, it's baby steps. The first immediate hurdle will come from the US CPI data later today. If we do see a softer set of inflation numbers, that will certainly validate the recent upside push in gold with buyers potentially poised to test the key resistance region above.
However, on the flipside, a stronger set of inflation numbers will more than likely weigh on gold back under $2,000 as buyers head back to the drawing board - awaiting for the next key event to validate their long-term view.
