During Thursday’s Asian trading session, the safe-haven-metal succeeded in stopping its bearish early-day rally and drew some fresh bids around the $1,815 level, as the heavy jump in Australia’s daily COVID cases joined worrisome virus numbers from New Zealand and the UK, to trigger the risk-off mood.

Thus, the downbeat market sentiment has been playing a major role in supporting the safe-haven GOLD prices. Furthermore, the cautious mood ahead of key US Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP) and chatter over the European Central Bank’s (ECB) reduction of weekly bond purchases put a further burden on the market trading mood.

The market trading sentiment failed to stop its downward overnight performance and remained sluggish during the second half of the Asian session on Thursday, as the fast spread of COVID-19, and its Delta variant kept the market trading sentiment under pressure. The record daily jump in new cases in Australia, and worrisome virus numbers from New Zealand and the UK, raised doubts about global economic recovery.

New Zealand has crossed the 700 mark in COVID-19 cases, with the recent daily rise in figures to 49, whereas Japan is set to extend the COVID-19 state of emergency, covering Tokyo and 20 of Japan’s 47 prefectures, by another two weeks.

In Australia, COVID-19 lockdown restrictions will not be eased until 70% of the adult population gets at least one vaccination, which is expected around Sept. 23. As a result, the S&P 500 Futures has turned sluggish above 4,500, dropping by 0.03%, close to 4,520 early on Thursday.

Furthermore, the increasing tension over the Afghan-Taliban and Sino-US issues had a further bearish impact on the global equity market. However, the sluggish appearance of US stock futures tends to highlight the risk-off sentiment, which should be supportive of gold.

The broad-based US dollar rose on the day, as a downbeat market sentiment tends to underpin safe-haven assets. Apart from this, the uptick in the US dollar was further bolstered by the concerns that the Delta coronavirus variant could delay global economic recovery.

Conversely, the gains in the US dollar were capped by the previously released downbeat US data, which kept the bulls depressed. Thus, the  ongoing bullish bias in the US dollar capped the upside for the precious metal.