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

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