Gold continues to pullback from the upper limit of a recent trading range at 38.2% retracement of the upward move launched in early-March 2021 ($1,825 area). Precious metal is likely to be on the move in the early afternoon, when the US NFP report for July is released (1:30 pm BST). Market expects addition of 900k jobs and an acceleration of wage growth from 3.6 to 3.9% YoY.

However, market has been treating bad news as good news as of late. Poor jobs report means that the Fed can keep pumping markets for longer. This is beneficial for stocks and negative for the US dollar. 8 out of past 12 NFP readings saw EURUSD move higher and in majority of cases US indices also moved higher. Orange circles on the chart below mark NFP release days. As one can see, gold has benefitted following each of the past 6 releases. Precious metal is trading near the lower limit of its trading range and it could be a good place for bulls to launch recovery.