Pressured by the renewed dollar strength on upbeat US PMI figures, gold lost its recovery momentum and dropped below $1,650. Meanwhile, the 10-year US T-bond yield is up nearly 1%, forcing XAU/USD to stay on the backfoot heading into the weekend.

The US dollar hits a new 20-year peak on the last day of the week and is seen as a key factor exerting downward pressure on the dollar-denominated gold. Adding to this, the prospects for more aggressive policy tightening by the Fed further contribute to driving flows away from the non-yielding yellow metal.

In fact, the markets have been pricing in another supersized 75 bps Fed rate hike move in November. The bets were reaffirmed by the Fed's so-called dot plot, revealing that policymakers expect the benchmark lending rate to top 4% by the end of 2022. From there, central bank officials anticipate further hikes in 2023.

Gold has recently broken below its two-year lows and the 200-week moving average at $1,691/76, marking the formation of a large ‘double top’ and we hence have changed our medium-term technical view on gold to negative.

We look for further deterioration to take place from here, with support seen at $1,618/16 initially. A close below here would then be seen to clear the way for a move to the 50% retracement of the whole 2015-2020 upmove at $1,560, a sustained break below which would open the door to extend the decline to the late 2019 and 2020 price lows as well as the 61.8% retracement at $1,451/40.

Conversely, only a convincing break above the 55-day moving average, currently at $1,732, would ease the pressure on the precious metal, with next resistance then seen at the even more important 200-day average, currently at $1,830

FED Rate Hikes Empowers Bears on Gold

Sep 23 2022