On Thursday (February 16), the international gold price rebounded weakly. Although the dollar fell slightly, strong economic data exacerbated concerns that the Federal Reserve will maintain high interest rates for a longer period of time. The prospect of further interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve has investors worrying and nervous. In the future, the price of gold will look at 1785 US dollars.
At 14:54 Beijing time, spot gold rose 0.01% to $1,836.05 an ounce; the main COMEX gold futures contract rose 0.02% to $1,845.6 an ounce; the U.S. dollar index fell 0.12% to 103.740.
It should be noted that the latest update from the World Gold Council shows that China’s gold imports will surge in 2022, the largest increase since 2018, which seems to provide some support for gold prices, especially after the price of gold fell nearly 1% overnight, hitting a record high on January 5. Since then, it has reached a new low of $1830.24 per ounce.
But data released on Wednesday (February 15) showed that U.S. retail sales rebounded in January after two consecutive months of decline, suggesting that the U.S. economy remains resilient despite rising borrowing costs. Strong retail sales data and persistently high U.S. inflation in January on Tuesday could give the Federal Reserve confidence to raise interest rates further, weighing on gold prices in the near term.
Hareesh V, head of commodity research at Geojit Financial Services, said: “While recent upbeat U.S. economic data and a firmer dollar continue to weigh on gold’s safe-haven status, there is potential for a modest technical rebound in gold as prices slump to multi-week lows. “
Several Fed policymakers said this week that more rate hikes would be needed to bring inflation down to the central bank’s 2 percent target. Money markets expect the Fed’s target rate to peak above 5.2 percent in July, with further hikes in May and June.
Gold prices are moving lower within a descending channel. The price is below the Ichimoku chart, indicating that it is in a downtrend. After the gold price falls below the cloud chart baseline of $1,870, it will drop to $1,785. A further signal to confirm the decline will be a pullback from the upper border of the bearish channel. If the upper boundary of the cloud is broken and maintained above $1920, the situation will be invalidated, which means that the price of gold will rise further to $1955.