Prices Head Towards Buying Levels

• After a quiet and stable start in the shadow of the American holiday XAU/USD gold futures fell below $1950, with losses affecting the support level at $1930 an ounce.
• This happened before settling around the $1940 level at the time of writing.
• The decline coincided with investors’ readiness for an additional increase in US interest rates in the second half of 2023.
• While the loss in gold prices was limited, the latest downward run since sliding to record highs has sparked some panic about the future of the precious metal.

All in all, the XAU/USD gold price retreated from a weekly loss of about 1%, but it is still up more than 6% since the beginning of the year 2023. In the same way, the price of silver, gold’s sister commodity, breached below $24 an ounce. The price of the white metal fell by 4% last week, bringing its 2023 year-to-date performance to -4%. It will be a relatively quiet week for gold-related news. The yellow metal is likely to find direction in the flurry of rhetoric from Fed officials, including Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s semi-annual testimony to Congress.

Last week, the US central bank left interest rates unchanged, but indicated that two rate hikes are soon, with the futures market anticipating as early as the July Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting. “This is probably partly because the market was expecting further price increases anyway, and partly because the extent to which monetary policy is tightening further is not excessive,” Thu Lan Nguyen, commodities analyst at Commerzbank, wrote in a paper.

Meanwhile, the US Treasury market was mostly in the red, with the 10-year yield down five basis points to 3.719%. One-month bond yields were flat at 5.115%, while the 30-year yield fell 4.4 basis points to 3.812%. Gold is usually sensitive to movements in interest rates because they can affect the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding bullion.

The US currency also affected gold prices on Tuesday. The US Dollar Index (DXY), a measure of the US currency against a basket of other major currencies, rose to 102.66, from an opening of 102.48. In general, the price of the dollar decreased by 0.66% last week, and it is down by about 1% since the beginning of the year 2023 to date.

Generally, a stronger profit is bad for dollar-denominated commodities because it makes them more expensive for foreign investors to buy.

As for other metals markets, copper futures fell to $3.8725 a pound. Platinum futures fell to $965.70 an ounce. Palladium futures fell to $1,378.50 an ounce.

According to the performance on the daily chart below, the XAU/USD gold price is heading towards new buying levels. I see the most appropriate ones for that time 1925, 1910, and 1885, respectively. This may happen if signals from US Central Bank Governor Jerome Powell come to support the future of tightening the bank’s policy with more US rate hikes, to change the market’s view after the bank’s recent decision to stop raising last week.

On the other hand, the XAU/USD gold price will have the opportunity for the markets to talk more about the future of the psychological resistance at $2000 an ounce, in case prices return towards the $1965 and $1980 resistance levels, respectively. I still prefer to buy gold from every downward level.

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