Analyst: On the eve of the non-farm payroll data release, market expectations for the Federal Reserve to further cut interest rates are heating up.

Odaily Planet Daily News Analyst Haresh Menghani stated that gold maintained a slight decline in the first half of the European session. However, ahead of the market’s closely watched US non-farm payrolls data, investors chose to stay on the sidelines, and gold lacked strong bearish momentum. The key US employment data will provide clues about the Federal Reserve’s rate cut path, which will in turn play a crucial role in influencing the short-term trend of the US dollar and bring new momentum to gold. Amid risk aversion before the release of key data, the US dollar continued its two-week rally and reached a one-month high, exerting some downward pressure on gold prices. However, market expectations of further rate cuts by the Federal Reserve have increased, coupled with ongoing geopolitical uncertainties, which still support gold as a safe-haven asset. This complex fundamental backdrop of mixed bullish and bearish factors has made traders hesitant to place new directional bets, resulting in a flat gold price trend with range-bound fluctuations. (Jin10)