Gold Price Forecast: XAU/USD continues to gain traction amid a weaker US economy

• XAU/USD tallies a three-day winning streak, trading near the $1,940 area, with around 0.30% of daily gains.
• Lower US labour market figures fueled dovish bets on the Fed.
• Gold price gathered momentum amid retreating US Treasury bond yields.

On Wednesday, the XAU/USD continued gaining traction for a third consecutive day, trading around the $1,940 zone, showing nearly 1.50% gains in the bullish streak. The pessimistic labour market data for the US caused the Greenback to trade weak against most of its rivals in Wednesday's session on the back of decreasing US Treasury bond yields, which allowed the yellow metal to find demand.

While market participants continued to digest soft July JOLTS Job Openings from Tuesday, the US reported weaker labour market figures on Wednesday as ADP Employment Change increased by 177,000 employed people in the US, lower than the expected 195,000 and the previous 371,000.

It's worth mentioning that Jerome Powell highlighted at last week’s Jackson Hole Symposium that the restrictive monetary policy will be maintained until the data shows a cooling trend and weak economic figures from the US opened the downside of the Treasury yields, which weighs on the Greenback. That said, the US bond for 2, 5 and 10-year yields decreased to 4.88%, 4.26% and 4.11%, respectively, with around 0.40% daily losses. As the Treasury bond yields are often seen as the opportunity cost of holding gold, their decrease explains the XAU/USD advance.

As for now, the CME FedWatch Tool suggests that investors are betting on higher odds that the Federal Reserve (Fed)  won't hike in the September 20 meeting, while the odds of a hike in November slightly decreased to 40%. In addition, swaps markets are now discounting sooner rate cuts in June 2024, which also applies downside pressure to the US bond yields. However, these bets may change after Friday’s release of the Nonfarm Payrolls from August.

XAU/USD Levels to watch

According to the daily chart, the XAU/USD outlook is bullish for the short term as the Relative Strength Index (RSI) shows a pronounced slope pointing north in the positive territory. In addition, the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) histogram lays out rising green bars, indicating that bulls are gaining ground. On the bigger picture, the pair trades above the 20-day and 200-day Simple Moving Averages (SMAs), suggesting that the bulls recovered significant ground in the short term. Traders should see a potential bullish cross between the mentioned averages, which could further boost the buying momentum.

Resistance levels:$1,950, $1,955 (100-day SMA), $1,970.
Support levels: $1, 940, $1,930, $1,915.

XAU/USD Daily Chart