The yellow metal's price reached the resistance of the 55-hour SMA on Thursday morning. The SMA was broken, and immediately the 100-hour SMA stopped the surge that followed.
Afterwards, for seven consecutive hours, the 100-hour SMA kept the price from moving higher. Due to that reason, it was expected that the rate would get squeezed in between the resistance of the 100-hour SMA and the 1,560.00 level.
Economic Calendar Analysis
On Friday, at 13:30 GMT both Canada and US will release their employment data. The release will consist of two numbers from Canada and three from the US.
Next week, notable data releases are set to start on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, at 09:30 GMT, the UK Manufacturing Production, Monthly GDP and the Preliminary Quarterly GDP are set to be published. Usually, the Monthly GDP and Manufacturing Production are released together. The quarterly GDP appears once every three months and causes a larger reaction than the monthly data. So, concentrate more on the pip moves on the historical table of the Preliminary GDP.
On Wednesday, at 01:00 GMT the Reserve Bank of New Zealand is scheduled to make a rate announcement. This event is expected to cause the largest move of the week.
Later in the day, the weekly US Crude Oil Inventories will be released. This week, the data will be out at 15:30 GMT.
On Thursday, the US CPI data sets are set to be published at 13:30 GMT. Last but not least, on Friday the US Retail Sales data will be out also at 13:30 GMT.
The week's event historical data tables have been published. Click on the headline below to read the article.
XAU/USD short-term forecast
On Wednesday, the XAU/USD exchange rate reversed north from the 1,550.00 level. During today's morning, the rate was testing the resistance provided by the 100-hour SMA.
Note that yellow metal could also face the resistance of the 200-hour SMA at 1,574.00. Thus, a reversal south could occur in the nearest future, and the rate could re-test the 1,550.00 level.
On the other hand, yellow metal could gain support of the 55-hour moving average at the 1,560.00. In this case gold could consolidate against the US Dollar within the following trading session.
Hourly Chart
On the daily candle chart, it can be observed how the rate broke the channel up pattern, which guided the rate's surge since the start of December.
Meanwhile, take into account that the metal is overbought, as indicated by daily simple moving averages, which are located near the 1,500.00 level.
Daily Chart
Traders are neutral on gold
On Thursday, the Swiss Foreign Exchange gold sentiment was 53% short. Namely, 53% of open gold position volume was in short positions and 47% was in long positions.
Meanwhile, in the 1000 base point range around the current metal's price the pending orders were set to buy– 56% of orders were to buy and 44% to sell.
The orders were 58% to sell on Wednesday.