Gold eases from tops, holds above $1500 mark

Gold struggled to capitalize on the intraday uptick and momentarily slipped below the key $1500 psychological mark in the last hour, albeit quickly bounced back to the neutral territory.
 
After the previous session's rather volatile swings, the precious metal regained some traction on the last trading day of the week and climbed to an intraday high level of $1509. Expectations that the Fed will move to ease the monetary policy further turned out to be one of the key factors benefitting the non-yielding yellow metal.

A modest USD uptick weighs

However, the intraday uptick lacked any strong bullish conviction amid encouraging trade-related development, which tends to dent the precious metal's safe-haven demand. This coupled with a modest US Dollar uptick - led by Friday's stronger US headline retail sales figures - exerted some fresh downward pressure on the dollar-denominated commodity - Gold.
 
Despite some good two-way price moves over the past two trading session, the commodity lacked any firm near-term directional bias as investors seemed to await a fresh catalyst from the upcoming FOMC meeting on September 17-18, which should help determine the next leg of a directional move.
 
From a technical perspective, the lack of any strong follow-through buying, despite the overnight post-ECB upsurge might now be seen as indications of possible bullish exhaustion. The weaker outlook will be reinforced below this week's swing lows support near the $1485 region, which should set the stage for an extension of the recent pullback from multi-year tops.

Technical levels to watch