Gold consolidates overnight strong gains to fresh one-year tops

Gold was seen consolidating overnight strong gains to fresh one-year tops and seesawed between tepid gains/minor losses through early Asian session on Friday.

A fresh wave of greenback selling pressure, with the key US Dollar Index sinking to fresh YTD lows below mid-91.00s supported the precious metal's strong rally on Thursday. A broad based USD sell-off was primarily led by a sharp rally in the EUR/USD major after the ECB President Mario Draghi said that decision on tapering would be made in October. 

Adding to this, the US data showed initial jobless claims jumped to its highest level in more than two year and further dented already weaker sentiment surrounding the greenback. 

Meanwhile, a slight deterioration in investors' risk appetite, as depicted by weaker trading sentiment around Asian equity markets, remains supportive for the yellow metal's safe-haven appeal. 

This coupled with the ongonig crisis over N. Korea and less hawkish comments from NY Fed's Dudley might further contribute towards limiting any immediate profit taking slide for the commodity.

Technical levels to watch

Immediate resistance is pegged near $1352 area, above which the commodity is likely to dart towards $1358 intermediate hurdle en-route early August 2016 highs resistance near the $1365-67 region.

On the downside, any corrective slide is likely to find immediate support near $1244 level, which is closely followed by support near $1339 area.