Gold traded sideways on Thursday morning. Afterwards, around 12:00 GMT the metal approached the support of the 1,294.00 level, where the 100-hour simple moving average was located at.
If that level would get passed, the 1,290.00 level could be reached.
All of the notable data sets of the week have been published. You can watch all of the data covers on the Dukascopy Webinars YouTube channel.
XAU/USD short-term forecast
Yesterday, the XAU/USD exchange rate traded sideways around the 55-hour moving average, currently located at the 1,297.25 mark.
From a theoretical point of view, it is likely, that the price for gold could decline, as it should target the lower boundary of the short-term ascending channel. However, the rate has to surpass the 100-hour SMA at 1,293.57.
If the given support level holds, it is likely, that gold could trade sideways between the given moving averages. Also, it is unlikely, that the rate could breach the given channel south due to the 200-hour SMA at 1,288.41.
Hourly Chart
On the daily candle chart the commodity price has broken the strong resistance cluster near the 1,290.00 level.Namely, the upper trend line of a channel down pattern, a 23.60% Fibonacci retracement level and two daily simple moving averages were ignored during the fundamental jump of the metal's price.
By the middle of Thursday's London trading session these technical levels had begun to provide support to the commodity price.
Daily Chart
Swiss traders short gold
On Thursday, 68% of all total open gold position volume on the Swiss Foreign Exchange was in short positions.
A majority of traders was profiting from the decline.
Meanwhile, in the 1000 base point range around the current price 71% of pending orders were set to buy the metal.
Combined the sentiment information leads to the assumption that most traders had their stop losses close by.