Gold Prices Find Fresh Support As Trade War Fears Grip Markets

Gold price found interim support and are attempting an offensive having touched a two-month low last week. The drop was set off by hawkish comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell that tarnished the appeal of anti-fiat and non-interest-bearing assets. The move turned as US President Donald Trump unexpectedly hiked tariffs on steel and aluminum, shocking markets.

Crude oil prices fell in with broad-based market sentiment trends. Investors’ dour mood – initially spoiled by the prospect of rapid Fed interest rate hikes and then compounded by trade war jitters – familiarly translated into lower stock prices. The risk-geared WTI contract mirrored those moves, tracking the bellwether S&P 500 equity index downward.

Concerns about a growth-killing protectionist flare-up and an apparently worrying outcome in Italy’s general election are weighing heavily on risk appetite at the start of the week. Futures tracking European and US equity benchmarks pointing decidedly lower before their corresponding bourses come online. That spells trouble for oil prices, though gold may continue to benefit from traders’ uneasy disposition.

Headlines emerging from the first day of the CERAWeek conference in Houston – including the unveiling of a new IEA five-year oil market forecast – might briefly break the dominance of macro-level themes. February’s non-manufacturing ISM gauge is also on tap, with a slight slowdown in the pace of US service-sector growth expected. Markets may not care about such minutiae for very long however.

GOLD TECHNICAL ANALYSIS

Gold prices are attempting to launch a tepid recovery, with prices probing above the resistance line defining the near-term down move from mid-February’s swing high. A daily close above that level – now at 1323.78 – followed by a breach of the 23.6% Fibonacci expansion at 1333.51 exposes the 38.2% threshold at 1352.40. Alternatively, a move below support in the 1312.36-16.50 area targets the 50% Fib retracement at 1301.19.