Gold hits 2-week tops, around $1320 level amid global growth concerns

   “¢   Builds on the overnight goodish bounce triggered by disappointing US macro data.
   “¢   Disappointing Chinese data added to global growth concerns and remained supportive.
   “¢   Technical buying further accelerates the up-move and offset some renewed USD strength.

Gold built on the overnight goodish bounce from monthly lows and continued gaining positive traction through the mid-European session on Friday.

The precious metal continued showing some resilience ahead of the key $1300 psychological mark and staged a solid recovery in reaction to shockingly poor US monthly retail sales data for December.  

The dismal data reinforced the Fed’s cautious stance and took its toll over the US Dollar, which was seen as one of the key factors that triggered some short-covering move around the dollar-denominated commodity.

The positive momentum got an additional boost on Friday amid reviving safe-haven demand following the release of softer Chinese inflation figures, which reinforced concerns over the global economic slowdown.

The positive momentum seemed rather unaffected by some renewed USD strength, with possibilities of some additional short-covering, above the $1315-16 supply zone, providing an additional boost in the last hour or so.

The commodity has now climbed to two-week tops and in absence of any major market moving economic releases, could head further towards challenging multi-month tops, around the $1326 region set on Jan. 31.

Technical levels to watch