Gold jumps to the highest level since February 2013, around $1620 area

• Gold turns positive for the third consecutive session on Thursday.
• A softer tone around equity markets helped regain positive traction.
• Sliding US bond yields provided an additional boost to the commodity.

Gold reversed an early dip to the $1604 area and jumped to fresh multi-year tops during the mid-European session on Thursday.

The precious metal added to its recent strong gains and continued gaining some positive traction for the third consecutive session on Thursday amid mounting concerns about deepening economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak.

Bulls remain in control

The rising number of coronavirus cases in Japan further fueled market worries and weighed on investors’ sentiment. This was evident from a softer tone surrounding equity markets and underpinned the precious metal’s safe-haven demand.

The risk-off flows were further reinforced by a fresh leg of a downfall in the US Treasury bond yields, which further played their part in providing an additional boost and lifted the non-yielding yellow metal closer to the $1620 region.

Meanwhile, the ongoing upward trajectory to the highest level since February 2013 seemed rather unaffected by the prevailing strong bullish sentiment surrounding the US dollar, which tends to dent demand for the dollar-denominated commodity.

However, oscillators on short/medium-term charts are already flashing slightly overbought conditions, which might hold bulls from placing fresh bets and might turn out to be the only factor capping any further gains, at least for the time being.

Technical levels to watch