Gold hangs near weekly lows, below $1530 level

• Dovish Fed expectations seemed to help limit the downside.
• US-China trade optimism is likely to cap any positive move.

Gold seesawed between tepid gains/minor losses through the early European session on Friday and remained well within the striking distance of weekly lows set in the previous session.
 
Trade jittered eased a bid on Thursday after both China and the United States (US) indicated that trade talks between the two sides may resume soon. The latest optimism lifted the global risk sentiment, which was evident from a strong rally in equity markets and weighed on Gold's perceived safe-haven status.

Downside remains cushioned, only for the time being

This coupled with a goodish pickup in the US Dollar demand - supported by a solid intraday up-move in the US Treasury bond yields and mostly in line US Q2 GDP growth figures - exerted some additional downward pressure on the dollar-denominated commodity and collaborated to the intraday long-unwinding trade.
 
Despite the latest trade-related optimism, the downside remained cushioned amid firming expectations that the Fed will cut interest rates further by 25 bps in September, which seemed to be the only factor lending some support to the non-yielding yellow metal, at least for the time being.
 
Meanwhile, bearish RSI divergence on daily charts now seemed to suggest that Gold might have already topped out in the near-term, which held investors from initiating any fresh bullish bets and might continue to cap the upside, rather attract some fresh selling on every attempted up-move.
 
Later during the early North-American session, the US economic docket - highlights the release of personal spending data and July core PCE price Index - will now be looked upon to grab some short-term trading opportunities on the last day of the week.

Technical levels to watch