Gold spikes to fresh session tops amid renewed USD selling

   •  USD weighed down by Trump’s protectionist stance.
   •  Risk-off mood provides an additional boost to safe-haven assets.
   •  Fed rate hike prospects might continue to cap strong gains. 

Gold finally broke out of its Asian/early European session consolidation phase and spiked to fresh session tops in the last hour.

A fresh wave of US Dollar selling interest, triggered by the US President Donald Trump's tweet on trade war, provided some lift to dollar-denominated commodities - like gold. 

Adding to this, global risk aversion trade, as depicted by a sea of red across European equity markets, was further seen underpinning demand for traditional safe-haven assets and remained supportive of the precious metal's uptick. 

However, a goodish pickup in the US Treasury bond yields, amid growing speculations about faster Fed monetary policy tightening cycle, continued capping any strong gains for the non-yielding yellow metal. 

It would now be interesting to see if bulls are able to maintain their upper hand or the uptick is being sold into amid absent market moving economic releases from the US. 

Technical levels to watch

A follow-through buying interest is likely to prompt some fresh short-covering move and lift the commodity further towards $1333 supply zone en-route $1340 strong resistance. On the flip side, $1317 level now seems to act as an immediate support, which if broken might turn the metal vulnerable to head back towards testing $1307-06 intermediate support before eventually dropping to 100-day SMA support near the key $1300 psychological mark.