Gold through 200-DMA barrier, hits fresh two-week highs

Gold started the week on an upbeat note and has now moved past the technically important 200-day SMA strong hurdle near $1,230 region. 

The precious metal built on last week's strong gains and jumped to fresh two-week tops during early NA session on Monday as the recent US data-disappointment has now raised skepticism that the Fed might not be able to stick to monetary policy normalization path. The ongoing slide in the US Treasury bond yields is supportive of the market speculations and is eventually benefitting the non-yielding yellow metal.

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Adding to this, the prevalent cautious environment was also seen driving flows towards traditional safe-haven assets and further collaborated to the metal's up-move to the highest level since July 3. 

Meanwhile, a modest US Dollar uptick, which tends to weigh on dollar-denominated commodities, did little to stall the ongoing up-move, albeit seems to be contributing towards capping further up-move, at least for the time being.

In absence of any major market moving economic releases, broader market risk sentiment and the US bond yield dynamics would continue to act as key determinants of the metal's movement through the NY trading session on Monday.

Technical levels to watch

Momentum above $1236 level could get extended towards $1242 horizontal resistance en-route 100-day SMA hurdle near the $1247 region. On the downside, 200-day SMA near $1230 area now becomes immediate support, which if broken could accelerate the slide towards $1226 horizontal level ahead of the $1220 important support.