Gold drops to session low, reverses Friday's positive move

Gold extended its steady intraday decline through the early European session on Monday and is currently placed near the lower end of its daily trading range, around the $1455 region.

A combination of negative forces failed to assist the precious metal in building on the previous session's goodish positive mood to one-week tops, rather prompted some fresh selling on the first day of a new trading week.

Stronger Chinese data, surging US bond yields weigh

Positive economic data from China, showing an unexpected growth in the manufacturing activity in November, boosted the global risk sentiment and dented demand for the precious metal's perceived safe-haven status.

In fact, the official data released over the weekend showed that China's manufacturing PMI moved in the expansion territory for the first time since April and came in at 50.2 for November, up from 49.3 previous.

Adding to this, China’s Caixin/Market PMI also bettered market expectations and edged higher to 51.8 from 51.7 reported last month and also played its part in weighing gold prices on the first day of a new week.

The risk-on mood was reinforced by some strong follow-through upsurge in the US Treasury bond yields, now up over 4% for the day, which further collaborated towards driving flows away from the non-yielding yellow metal.

Meanwhile, persistent uncertainty over the "phase one" US-China trade deal, especially after the US President Donald Trump showed his support for Hong Kong demonstrators last week, did little to lend any support.

Even a subdued US dollar demand also failed to ease the prevalent bearish pressure surrounding the dollar-denominated commodity or stall the ongoing downfall back closer to last week's swing low, at least for now.

Moving ahead, Monday's US economic docket – highlighting the release of ISM Manufacturing PMI – will now be looked upon for some fresh trading impetus later during the early North-American session.

Technical levels to watch