Gold slides to session lows, farther below $1500 mark

• The risk-on mood continues to weigh on traditional safe-haven assets, including Gold.
• Strong rally the US bond yields underpinned the USD and added to the selling bias.

Gold finally broke down of its daily consolidative trading range and dropped to fresh session lows, below the key $1500 psychological mark in the last hour.
 
The precious metal failed to capitalize on its early uptick, rather met with some fresh supply near the $1508 region and retreated farther from over three-week tops set on Friday amid a sudden pickup in the US Dollar demand.

Weighed down by trade optimism/USD uptick

Given that yet another interest rate cut move by the Fed has already priced in the market, a strong rally in the US Treasury bond yields underpinned the Greenback demand and weighed on the dollar-denominated commodity.
 
This coupled with the prevalent risk-on mood, as depicted by indications of a strong opening in the US equity markets, further collaborated towards driving flows away from traditional safe-haven assets – including Gold.
 
Meanwhile, the latest leg of an intraday slide over the past hour or so came after the US President Donald Trump told reporters that US-China deal was ahead of a scheduled and added to the recent trade optimism.
 
It is worth reporting that the US Trade Representative's office said on Friday that the US and China have come close to finalizing parts of a “phase one” trade deal and that they hope to sign a deal in mid-November.
 
It will now be interesting to see if the metal is able to attract any dip-buying interest at lower levels or extends the ongoing pullback amid absent relevant market-moving US economic releases on the first day of a new trading week.

Technical levels to watch