Gold climbs to weekly tops, further beyond $1510 level

• China’s announces retaliatory tariffs and boosted the commodity’s safe-haven demand.
• A modest intraday USD pullback remains limited after Powell’s speech and capped gains.

Gold reversed an early dip to $1493-92 support area and spiked back closer to weekly tops in reaction to China’s retaliatory tariffs, albeit lacked any strong follow-through.
 
In the latest trade-related development, China announced to levy retaliatory tariffs on another $75 billion worth of US goods. The move was seen as a further escalation in trade conflicts between the world’s two largest economies and provided a strong boost to the precious metal’s perceived safe-haven status.

Influenced by USD price dynamics

This coupled with a modest US Dollar pullback, led by St Louis Fed President James Bullard’s dovish comments that there will be a debate about 50 bps cut at next meeting and that lower rates would help us hit the inflation target, further lifted the dollar-denominated commodity back above the key $1500 psychological mark.
 
The USD downtick, however, turned out to be rather limited following the Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s scheduled speech at Jackson Hole Symposium. Powell reiterated the stance to act as appropriate to sustain the expansion and refrained from providing clear signals about further, which kept a lid on any further up-move for the non-yielding yellow metal.
 
With today’s key event risk out of the way, it would now be interesting to see if bulls are able to capitalize on the move or refrain from placing any aggressive bets. Nevertheless, at current levels, the commodity seems all set to end the week with modest losses and snap three consecutive weeks of winning streak, though might still manage to settle above the $1500 mark.

Technical levels to watch