The near-term chart highlights better the technical picture in gold at the moment:
The jump higher on Friday stalled at around $2,060, coinciding with the 61.8 Fib retracement level of the swing lower to start the new year. Since then, gold has been consolidating its upside break before fizzling in trading today. The bid in the dollar in European trading now sees gold quickly fall by 0.7% to $2,039 levels on the day.
That is seeing a test of the key hourly moving averages, with the confluence of the 100-hour (red line) and 200-hour (blue line) moving averages seen at the $2,038.73 to $2,039.46 region.
A break below that will see sellers seize back near-term control and invite some downside pressure in gold once again. Hold above, and buyers will at least stay in contention to try and keep the momentum from Friday last week going.
On the latter approach though, gold is still facing some tough technical limitations with the 2020 highs around $2,073 still largely keeping a ceiling on price action. In that line of argument, a downside push might appear more favourable especially if broader markets end up reversing further some of the aggressive rate cuts pricing in the last two months.
