On Thursday the situation on the yellow metal charts did not change. Gold prices were still trading in the zone near the 1,285.00 level.
However, the 100-hour SMA was approaching and would provide resistance to the price that could cause a decline.
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
During Wednesday's trading session, the yellow metal was trading around the 55-hour simple moving average to end the trading day at 1,285.00.
Most likely the decline will resume, as soon as the 100- hour SMA will reach the metal's price from the above. The 100-hour SMA was located near 1,290.60 by the middle of the day's trading.
The next target for the metal from a technical analysis perspective is the monthly S2 at 1,276.65.
Hourly Chart
On the daily chart it can be seen that the rate is consolidating its decline after falling from the 1,340.00 level, which was touched in February.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 Thursday, 59% 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 60% of orders were set to buy.
The buy orders might be the take profits and stop losses of the short positions.