Gold keeps the red near $1410 level ahead of Powell’s speech

• The USD gets a strong boost from upbeat US retail sales and prompts some aggressive selling.
• The downside remains limited ahead of the Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s scheduled speech.

Gold finally broke down of its consolidative trading range and tumbled to fresh session lows, below $1410 level during the early North-American session.

The already strong US Dollar picked up some additional pace following the release of upbeat US monthly retail sales data for June and turned out to be one of the key factors exerting heavy downward pressure on the dollar-denominated commodity.

This coupled with a modest uptick in the US Treasury bond yields further collaborated towards driving flows away from the non-yielding yellow metal, with a positive mood around equity markets doing little to support the precious metal's safe-haven demand. 

The downside, however, remained limited, at least for the time being, as investors still seemed reluctant to place any aggressive bets ahead of the Fed Chair Jerome Powell's scheduled speech later during the US trading session.

Hence, it would be prudent to wait for a strong follow-through selling before traders start positioning for any further near-term depreciating move back towards challenging the key $1400 psychological mark.

Technical levels to watch