Relaxed Position, Gold Price Still Firm Above $2,000

<p>&nbsp;Despite continuing to fall from the beginning of the week, the price of gold managed to maintain its position at the support level above $2,000 during the opening session of Asia this morning.</p><p><br /></p><p>The market expects the Federal Reserve (FED) to cut interest rates in March 2024 and this factor continues to provide some support to gold.</p><p><br /></p><p>The price opened at $2,025 with a decrease of 0.03% compared to yesterday.</p><p><br /></p><p>Meanwhile, the US dollar currency is seen to be stronger compared to the world's main currency group with an increase at 104.15 seen on the DXY index. However, the 10-year US treasury yield still showed a decline from 4.20% to 4.11%.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>The November ADP employment data released yesterday was 103,000 lower than forecast and also the previous month.</p><p><br /></p><p>This follows the number of JOLTS job offers in October which were the lowest since March 2021, down to 8.73 million from a downwardly revised 9.35 million in September.</p><p><br /></p><p>In another development, the Moody's firm still lowered the credit rating of the Chinese government to negative since last Tuesday. The relatively pessimistic state of the country's economy will affect commodity sentiment and put pressure on the gold market as they are one of the world's largest producers of the yellow metal.</p><p><br /></p><p>For now, gold traders will continue to pay attention to China's trade data and US weekly jobless claims data which is expected to rise by 222,000.</p><p><br /></p><p>On Friday, attention will turn to the US NFP jobs data to observe the number of job gains in November, the unemployment rate and also average hourly earnings in the US.</p>