Gold Price Analysis: XAU/USD's upside capped buy 5-week SMA

• Gold struggles to penetrate the 5-week SMA hurdle. 
• While gold is up 1% on the week, an 11-month descending trendline is still intact.

Gold trades near $1,810 per ounce at press time, having failed to take out the descending or bearish 5-week Simple Moving Average of $1,816 on Tuesday. 

The sellers failed to establish a foothold under the November low of $12,764 last week, and the metal has risen by more than 1% this week. 

Even so, it's too early to call a bullish reversal, as the descending trendline falling from the record high of $2,075 reached in August is still intact. 

A convincing weekly close above the trendline would imply an end of the pullback from record highs and a resumption of the broader uptrend from the March 2020 low of $1,451.

The bearish bias would strengthen if the metal drops below the weekly low of $1,781.

Weekly chart

Trend: Bearish

Technical levels