Gold trades above $1,480, struggles to pull away from multi-week lows
- Wall Street starts the new week on a positive note.
- US Dollar Index extends gains above 99 on Monday.
- 10-year United States (US) Treasury bond yield rises modestly.
After closing the previous week below the critical $1,500 handle, the XAU/USD pair started the new week on the backfoot and slumped to its lowest level since early August at $1,480. As of writing, the pair was trading near $1,481, losing 1.05%, or $15.5, on the day.
Market sentiment recovers on Monday
Friday's headlines suggesting that the Trump administration was planning to limit investor portfolio flows into China and remove Chinese companies from US exchanges created a risk-off environment at the end of the week. However, with a US official denying these reports and China's Foreign Minister voicing his concerns over a potential "decoupling" of the US and China ahead of high-level trade negotiations in Washington allowed the sentiment to recover and made it difficult for safe-havens to find demand.
The 10-year US Treasury bond yield gained traction earlier in the day but turned flat during the American trading hours while Wall Street's main indexes opened in the positive territory and continue to cling to modest gains.
On the other hand, the broad-based Greenback strength seems to be putting additional weight on the pair's shoulders. Despite today's mixed macroeconomic data releases from the US, the US Dollar Index reached its highest level in more than two years at 99.46 and was last seen up 0.25% on the day at 99.38.
The Institue for Supply Management (ISM) Chicago's Purchasing Managers' Index arrived at 47.1 to miss the market expectation of 50.2 but the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas' Manufacturing Index came in at 1.5 and bettered analysts' estimate of -2.3.
Technical levels to watch for
Author
Eren Sengezer
FXStreet
As an economist at heart, Eren Sengezer specializes in the assessment of the short-term and long-term impacts of macroeconomic data, central bank policies and political developments on financial assets.
