By the second half of Monday's London session the yellow metal's decline had reached the 1,285.00 level.
Meanwhile, the metal's price had no technical support as low as the weekly S2 at the 1,276.65 level.
This week is set to be the first one of the month. Due to that reason it is set to have important data releases occurring.
The notable data releases that Dukascopy Analytics will cover will start on Wednesday. At 13:30 GMT the Canadian Trade Balance will be published and cause a notable move on all CAD pairs.
Moreover, at 15:00 GMT the Bank of Canada will publish their Overnight Rate, which has on average caused moves around 80 base points on the USD/CAD.
On Thursday, all attention will be on the European Central Bank. The bank will publish its Main Refinancing Rate at 12:45 GMT and host a press conference at 13:30 GMT.
The rate announcement has become insignificant, as the ECB keeps their rate at 0.00%. Instead during the press conference the heads of the bank will reveal information about the ECB's asset buying program.
On Friday, Canada and the US will publish their monthly employment data sets. It has five important data sets impacting the USD/CAD. It is the most complicated one to work with, as each data set impacts the rate differently.
For more information watch the weekly calendar analysis stream on our YouTube channel.
XAU/USD short term forecast
Gold continued to decline on Monday. It had reached below the 1,290.00 level. In general, the decline was expected to continue, as the metal faced no technical support as low as the 1,276.65 level.
Meanwhile, the decline was overextended. Due to that reason the price might first trade sideways to consolidate its level. In addition, the simple moving averages would then catch up.
Hourly Chart
On the daily chart the ascending wedge pattern can be seen much better. It can be seen that the support of the wedge failed already on Thursday.Meanwhile, the 55-day SMA was passed on Monday. It now had become part of the resistance cluster near 1,295.00.
At the same time, below the monthly S2, at 1,265.00, the 100-day simple moving average was providing support.
Daily Chart
Traders ride the downwards move
Traders have been largely shorting the metal throughout the last couple of weeks
On Monday, 63% of all the open position volume on the Swiss Foreign Exchange was shorting the metal.
Meanwhile, the trader set up pending orders in a 1000 base point range around the metal's current price reveal additional information.
Namely, trader pending orders were mostly set to buy the commodity, as 83% of orders were set to buy.
The buy orders might be the take profits and stop losses of the short positions.