Fundamental view:

The yellow metal rebounded after a sharp fall of the previous week. The broad US dollar weakness and downbeat US ADP report favored the Gold to find strength during the first half of the week later the strong NFP data of US paused the bullish move of the quote XAU/USD. ADP showed a report that the employment in the private sector had declined from 301,000 in January which raised concerns over worsening conditions in the US labour market. Elsewhere, The BOE hiked its policy rate by 25 bps to 0.5% following the February policy meeting. The policy statement revealed that four members of the Monetary Policy Committee voted for a 50 bps rate hike. And the European Central Bank President Lagarde had a hawkish stance this week, She did not repeat her previous comment that interest rates were not likely to increase in 2022 when asked about it. The Hawkish stance from ECB and BOE also helped the yellow metal to climb higher against the greenback.

On Friday, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced that Nonfarm Payrolls increased by 467,000 in January, surpassing the market expectation of -192000.  The Unemployment Rate ticked higher to 4%, while the Participation Rate jumped to 62.2%, and signaled quite a healthy recovery in the sector. Additionally, the December print got revised higher to 510,000 from 199,000. NFP data helped the US dollar and didn’t allow the yellow metal to find bullish momentum.

The major economic events deciding the movement of the pair in the next week are EIA Crude Oil Stocks Change, WASDE Report at Feb 09, Initial Jobless Claims, Federal Budget Balance at Feb 10 and Michigan Consumer Sentiment at Feb 11 for US. 

XAU/USD Weekly outlook:

Technical View:

Last week’s high was 2.13% lower than the previous week. Maintaining high at 1814.9 and low at 1785.5 showed a movement of 294 pips.

In the upcoming week we expect XAU/USD to show a bullish trend. The Instrument is trading below the 200 Simple Moving Average and the MACD trades to nearly neutral. A solid breakout above 1819.8 may open a clean path towards 1832.1 and may take a way up to 1849.2. Should 1790.4 prove to be unreliable support, the XAUUSD may sink downwards 1773.3 and 1761.0 respectively. In H4 chart bullish shark pattern favors prospects of a bullish trend. Also to be noted hammer formation exerts the expectation of uptrend for the pair.