Gold jumps to over two-week tops, inching closer to $1300 mark

Gold continued gaining positive traction for the fifth consecutive session and rose to its highest level in over two-weeks on Thursday.

The precious metal extended its recovery move from last week's one-month lows and was being supported by persistent selling bias around the US Dollar, which dropped to a fresh over two-week low on Thursday. A weaker greenback tends to boost demand for dollar-denominated commodities. 

The minutes from the US Federal Reserve's September policy meeting reaffirmed December rate hike expectations, but set a somewhat dovish tone on concerns over stubbornly low inflationary pressure. The dovish outlook was evident from sliding US Treasury bond yields, which further benefitted the non-yielding yellow metal.

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Even the prevalent positive trading sentiment around global equity markets, which tends to weigh on traditional safe-haven assets, did little to stall the commodity's up-move back closer to $1300 mark.

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Moving ahead, the latest US PPI figures along with the usual weekly jobless claims would now be looked upon for some trading opportunities. The key focus, however, would be on speeches from influential FOMC member and Friday's important US macro data - CPI print and monthly retail sales data. 

Technical levels to watch

Immediate resistance is pegged near the $1300 handle, above which the metal is likely to aim towards testing $1308-09 horizontal zone ahead of $1315 hurdle. On the flip side, $1291 level now becomes immediate support to defend, which if broken is likely to accelerate the fall back towards $1284 intermediate support ahead of $1280-79 area.