During Friday morning, the XAU/USD exchange rate was testing the psychological level at 1,690.00.
It is likely that bulls could prevail in the market, and gold could continue to appreciate against the US Dollar.
Fed Rate Cut
The Federal Open Market Committee cut the Federal Funds Rate to a target range of 1.00% to 1.25% at an unscheduled emergency meeting.
The US policymakers announced the cut of the interest rate by a half of a percentage point in response to the increasing economic threat from the coronavirus outbreak.
Economic Calendar Analysis
Today, the US employment data will be released at 13:30 GMT.
This event consists of three data sets – the Unemployment Rate, Non-Farm Employment Change and the Average Hourly Earnings.
Next week, there will be only one event that could impact the XAU/USD rate.
On Wednesday, March 11, the US CPI and Core CPI will be published at 12:30 GMT.
Meanwhile, next week's data is available. Click on the link below to see the historical data tables with the reactions to various events.
XAU/USD short-term forecast
On Thursday, the XAU/USD exchange rate exceeded the monthly R1 at 1,668.23. During today's morning, the rate was trading in the 1,680.00 area.
On the one hand, it is likely that yellow metal could continue to appreciate against the US Dollar in the short term. In this case the rate could exceed the psychological level at 1,700.00.
On the other hand, gold, supported by the monthly R1, could continue to trade sideways against the Greenback. It is unlikely that bears could prevail, and the rate could decline below 1,635.00 due to support provided by the 100– and 200-hour SMA.
Hourly Chart
On the daily candle chart, the pierced channel up pattern continues to hold. The lower trend line of the pattern was pierced on Friday. However, the rate returned to trade in its borders.
In addition, during the recent decline, the rate was influenced by the support of the 55-day simple moving average, which has caught up to the price.
Daily Chart
Traders are short on gold
On Friday, the Swiss Foreign Exchange gold sentiment was 65% short.
Meanwhile, in the 1000 base point range around the current metal's price the pending orders were strongly bullish – 83% of orders were to buy and 17% to sell.