• XAU/USD advances some 0.09% as the last trading week of the year kicks in.
• The market sentiment is mixed, spurred by Omicron variant woes and transmissibility, despite being less lethal.
• XAU/USD Price Forecast: The weekly chart depicts a neutral bias, though a descending triangle has formed, threatening of pushing prices towards $1,5060s.

Gold (XAU/USD) vs. the greenback slightly advances during the New York session, trading at $1,809.01 at the time of writing. Omicron woes in the weekend spurred a cancellation of 3,000 plus flights, and thin liquidity conditions kept the market sentiment fluctuating between gainers and losers.

The yellow-metal rises despite broad US dollar strength

The US 10-year Treasury yield is flat, clinging to the 1.484% threshold, a tailwind for the non-yielding metal vs. the buck. At the same time, the US Dollar Index, which tracks the greenback’s value against a basket of its rivals, climbs some 0.15%, up to 96.17, staying above the 96.00 figure for the second consecutive week.

In the meantime, US Real-yields as of December 23 sit at -1.47%, flat following the footsteps of the US 10-year T-bond yield.

In the overnight session, the yellow-metal remained subdued in a $1,802-$1,812.40 narrow-range, at the lack of a catalyst, as the financial markets enter the last week of the year. Depicted by the 1-hour chart, XAU/USD’s downward move was capped by the double-zero psychological level and the 50-hour simple moving average (SMA), which lies around $1,807, pushing the non-yielding metal to current price levels

XAU/USD Price Forecast: Technical outlook

The weekly gold chart depicts that XAU/USD has a neutral, as shown by the weekly simple moving averages (SMAs) residing below the spot price. However, from the market-structure perspective, a series of successive lower-highs and higher-lows formed a descending triangle, a bearish formation, that in the event of breaking lower, would push gold prices to the 200-week SMA at $1,569.17, but it would face some hurdles on the way down.

The first support would be $1,721.52, followed by August 8 low at $1,687.19, followed by 2021 daily low at $1,676.70, and then the aforementioned 200-week SMA at $1,569.17.