In general, the yellow metal's price is set to surge, as it is being pushed up by an hourly SMA and has no technical resistance to it.
Economic Calendar Analysis
On Friday, January 3, the ISM Manufacturing PMI survey results will be released at 15:00 GMT.
At the same day, the FOMC Meeting Minutes data will be published at 19:00 GMT.
Meanwhile, this week's scheduled event historical data tables have been published. Click on the link below to read the article.
XAU/USD short-term forecast
Since last year, the yellow metal's price has been pushed up by the 55-hour simple moving average.
On Thursday, the price was expected to continue to be pushed up during the next trading session due to a couple of factors. The 55-hour SMA was about to be strengthened by the 100-hour SMA from below. Secondly, the rate faced no technical resistance as high as 1,544.00.
However, take into account the rate's previous attempt to sharply surge was stopped by a round price level. The 1,525.00 stopped the metal's surge on December 31.
Hourly Chart
On the daily candle chart, the price is surging after bouncing off the support of the channel up pattern that captures the rates surge that has been occurring since the middle of 2018.
Daily Chart
Traders short gold
On Thursday, on the Swiss Foreign Exchange 58% of open gold position volume was in long positions.
Meanwhile, in the 1000 base point range around the current metal's price the pending orders were bullish – 60% of orders were to buy and 40% to sell.