Gold reaches above 1,230

• SWFX market sentiment is 74% bullish
• Pending orders in the 1000-pip range set to sell in 57% of all cases
• US Retail Sales at 12:30 GMT

The metal has managed to break above the 1,230.00 level. Next technical resistance level was located near the 1,237.00 mark.

Oil price have decreased after the US Crude Oil Inventories data release on Thursday at 15:00 GMT. The one-minute candle lost 31 pips, or 0.44% right after the data release. In the next minutes the rate was trading at the 71.30 level.

The Energy Information Administration released the US Crude Inventories data that came out lower-than-expected of 6M, compare to forecasted 2.3M.

This week there is notable data on Monday

XAU/USD short term forecast

In regards to the near-term future, the gold will trade upwards to the upper boundary of the ascending medium pattern which is located at the 1,235.50 mark. Most likely the yellow metal will trade at the 1,230.00 level during the day. 

However, today's US fundament data sets could help the yellow metal to break the resistance of the pattern line to trade at the 1,240.00 level.

Hourly Chart

On the daily chart one needs to node that the resistance provided by the 100-day simple moving average at the 1,228.00 level was passed.
Daily Chart

Sentiment remains long on gold

On Monday, 72% of traders were long. It could be observed that some traders recently opened long positions, as the sentiment previously was 70% long.

Trader set up pending orders are still mostly set up to buy more gold. 71% of all orders are set to buy.

From this information we can deduct that, if the metal continues to surge, a lot more buying will begin, as 71% of all pending orders are to buy.