Gold remains confined in a range, moves little post-NFP

The NFP report showed that the US economy lost 701K jobs in March.
The unemployment rate spiked to 4.4% as compared to 3.8% expected.
The market, however, had a rather muted reaction to the jobs report.

Haresh Menghani FXStreet

Gold extended its sideways consolidative price action around the $1615 region and had a rather muted reaction to the US monthly employment details

A combination of diverging forces failed to assist the commodity to build on its positive move witnessed over the past two trading session and led to a subdued/range-bound trading action on the last day of the week.

The prevailing cautious mood around the equity market, coupled with a fresh leg down in the US Treasury bond yields turned out to be one of the key factors that extended some support to the precious metal.

The positive factor, to a larger extent, was offset by the prevailing strong bullish sentiment surrounding the US dollar, which undermined demand for the dollar-denominated commodity and capped the upside.

The USD remained well supported by concerns over the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, further illustrated by Thursday's unprecedented surge in the US Initial Jobless Claims.

Meanwhile, the latest US monthly jobs report showed that the number of employed people decreased by 701K in March as compared to 100K expected and the unemployment rate jumped to 4.4%.

However, the fact that the report pertains to a period until March 12, before lockdowns in any major US state, the market reaction was rather muted and did little to provide any meaningful impetus.

Technical levels to watch

XAU/USD

Overview
Today last price	1617.78
Today Daily Change	4.40
Today Daily Change %	0.27
Today daily open	1613.38

Trends
Daily SMA20	1585.29
Daily SMA50	1591.98
Daily SMA100	1547.3
Daily SMA200	1513.01

Levels
Previous Daily High	1620.5
Previous Daily Low	1582.92
Previous Weekly High	1644.54
Previous Weekly Low	1482.74
Previous Monthly High	1703.27
Previous Monthly Low	1451.3
Daily Fibonacci 38.2%	1606.14
Daily Fibonacci 61.8%	1597.28
Daily Pivot Point S1	1590.7
Daily Pivot Point S2	1568.02
Daily Pivot Point S3	1553.12
Daily Pivot Point R1	1628.28
Daily Pivot Point R2	1643.18
Daily Pivot Point R3	1665.86

Author

Haresh Menghani

FXStreet

Haresh Menghani is a detail-oriented professional with 10+ years of extensive experience in analysing the global financial markets.

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